September 29, 2006

Quote of the Day (II)

More distinguished Senatorial utterances, from Trent Lott:

It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people," he said. "Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.

Our political class is desperately mediocre these days, isn't it? How can we improve this dire situation? Yes, yes, we can try to vote the rascals out. But the problem is more endemic than that, and as we saw on tribunals/detainee rights, there is not much talent on either side of the aisle that causes confidence (Hillary's recent speech on this topic was strong, however). Still, and while I mostly stick to foreign policy in this space, I have a couple more mutinuous sentiments to share here ("mutinous" as I guess I'm still a Republican, if something of a dissident one, you know, the dead-on-the-vine Hagel kind, you might say), one spurred on by this latest comment quoted above from yet another charlatan masquerading as serious legislator. There are a couple of Lott's colleagues, up for election, that really need to go, in my view: 1) Rick Santorum, for his smarmy pieties and transparently naked, self-interested and devoid of real conviction political calculation, and 2) George Allen, for his tired good 'ol boy frat schtick (we can't afford any more of such cheery imbecilely for even a second longer come Jan '09, as we critically need competence rather than airy cheerleading in the Oval Office), not to speak of Allen's suspect past on issues of race. Go Webb and Casey!

Quote of the Day

"I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet."

-- President Bush, as reported in the New York Times per Bob Woodward's latest, speaking back in November of 2003.

By November of 2003 more American servicemen had died since May 1st of that year than had during the so-called "major combat" stage of the conflict in March and April of 2003 (more on how developed the insurgency was by late '03 here, here and here). As this detiorating security situation was intensifying, rather than focus on forging a serious counter-insurgency strategy, our President was instead pre-occupied with assuring no one in the councils of power use the "I" word. And we are told to believe we have Churchills at the helm. Bah! These are incompetents at the helm, not serious war leaders.

Woodward's Latest...

...via the NYT:

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.

A Secretary of Defense not answering a NSC Advisor's calls. We are far from the days Kissingers and Scowcrofts sat in that chair, eh? This maddening dysfunction had consequences, of course. Contra various blowhards chanting on about how we never needed more troops in Iraq:

Robert D. Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in a lengthy memorandum sent to Ms. Rice. The book says Mr. Blackwill’s memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed.

It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops during a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House did nothing in response.

Yes, when the NSC process is broken--the very one that is supposed to broker inter-Cabinet disputes and make cogent policy recommendations to the President--well, bad policy results. And wars get lost. But, hey, Rumsfeld may get to outlast McNamara as longest serving SecDef. That's the kind of thing that matters, these days, speaking of vanity!

September 27, 2006

Vanity

A commenter in a previous thread says Iraq was a "vanity" war. I suspect many historians, a few years on, will increasingly take this view. There was the dynastic vanity of the son who wanted to right the perceived shortcomings of Poppy's prior Mesopotamian involvement. There was the Cheneyesque 'I know best' vanity of the soi disant wise, knowing elder calmly steering us through the choppy Hobbesian waters. There was the crude Jacksonian vanity of Rumsfeld, who never cared a whit for the Iraqis. There was the Wolfowitzian vanity of the too exuberant high-brow neo-cons (and there was also the "cakewalk" vanity of the low-brow, group-thinking, spittle-licking ones). There was the 'shock and awe' vanity of Tommy Franks. There was the vanity of good intentions, as with Colin Powell--soldiering on rather than resigning earlier--likely thinking he could temper all the cheap bravado and mitigate the fall-out resulting from the gross incompetence that surrounded him. And then there was something of a national vanity: that Afghanistan had been too easy, 9/11 too big, and so we needed to kick a little more ass, to put it colloquially.

Further, and we shouldn't forget or gloss over it, there were a helluva lot of us who got dragged along for the ride, played like chumps we now know with hindsight. Realist types like me mostly did based on fears of Saddam's supposed chemical and biological WMD capability (relying on Tenet's 'slam dunk' for the causus belli), thinking 9/11 might have inspired Saddam, and per 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' that he might decide to cozy up with transnational terror groups like al-Qaeda to deliver a severe second-round blow to the U.S. Like many New Yorkers and others who were impacted or witnessed the attacks, I suspect, I suppose I also felt much anger, fused with an ill-advised sense of absolutist, moral righteousness that was its own form of self-indulgent vanity too, one that helped spur on copious helpings of jingo-fever in the air--with too few of us asking the hard questions about the hows and why and whos of how the post-war nation-building effort would be pursued (I speak here of Iraq, not the fully warranted conflict in Afghanistan). Such public confessionals aren't particularly pleasant, of course, but they have the merit of being honest reflections of what I now believe, for whatever they're worth.

Yes, it is true, Saddam was an odious character, and few mourn his passing from the scene. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we've committed a major blunder in Iraq, having helped stoke a new generation of jihadists in the Iraq bog, while having taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, and now floundering, to varying degrees, in both places. Our national repute in the Middle East is at a low ebb indeed, not to mention many others parts of the globe. Repairing this damage will take many years, perhaps decades even. Meantime, Islamist sentiment is growing in countries like Egypt and Syria--and our crude and naive democracy exportation policy appears increasingly untethered from such realities. We have become a clumsy, self-gratified and cocksure power, navigating a hugely complex region too often like purblind ignorants (see the recent Lebanese fiasco, to use a word in vogue, or our unserious, lazy policies with regard to Iran and Syria, among other examples).

But I digress, as we were speaking of vanity, meaning really a decadent self-satisfaction, an arrogant refusal to admit mistakes, a bloated sense of American exceptionalism. The irony is, what other country can assume a responsible mantle of world leadership at this turbulent time, if not us? Certainly not China, or the EU, or Russia, or anyone else. But we are dropping the ball, alas, including critically the moral high-ground, with our "evasive, quasi-participation" with regard to the Geneva Conventions (General Batiste's phrase), via the Addingtonian machinations bent on ensuring the Legislative Branch (wink wink) has blessed the Executive Branch's right to torture, albeit disguised with legalistic obfuscations or barely credible disclosure requirements in the Federal Register, among other such profoundly irresponsible chicanery that would have previously been unimaginable in our country anytime in the post-war era, if not well before then.

Well, in my humble view, the time for vanity is past, the time for recklessness is past, the time for falling easy prey to bamboozlement is past, the time for 'new paradigmists' thrashing hard-won tradition is past. It's high time for walloping doses of reality and sobriety and, above all, competence. But where is it? Certainly not among the incorrigible Beltway cheerleaders calling for a rapidly pitched together air-war on Iran, whatever the consequences. Have they no sense of deliberate statecraft or basic professionalism? Above all, have they no honor or shame?

The Case Against Fukuyama

I presume the breathtaking understatement of the first sentence of this book review is tongue-in-cheek, so as to inject a note of cheeky play into the august pages of TLS. Worth reading in full, for the high-brow talking points of those still defending the broad contours of the Bush Doctrine.

General Eaton: Excerpts From Opening Statement

Major General Paul Eaton, another senior military man who served in critical capacities in Iraq, testifying on the Hill earlier this week:

The most important function of government is to assure the security of the governed. Iraqis believe the same and observed to me that it is “better to live for 40 years under a dictatorship with order than 40 days of chaos.” The United States has failed to secure the peace after having artfully changed the Iraqi regime. We went in with a bad plan. We have failed to understand the strategic, operational and tactical levels of warfare in Iraq, and are responsible for the current state of affairs in a country the size of California with a population of 27 million souls. The leadership that has lead us to this point fails today to understand the strategic planning requirements to solve the Iraqi dilemma, stating essentially that their strategy is to stand up Iraqi Security Forces and to withdraw U.S. forces. Stay the course is not a strategy.

For the U.S. now, viable Iraqi Security Forces — read “Iraqi security” — is not a strategy; it is the end state, the objective. The strategy is in the “how” to get to the objective. It is basic military planning to identify the objective first, and then to develop the operational lines that will enable the achievement of the objective. The failure to properly lay out objective and operational lines for Phase IV has lead to lost time, resources and the loss of diplomatic and political capital. Most importantly, it has presented the opportunity for the insurgency to flourish with the ensuing sectarian violence, in the security vacuum Mr. Rumsfeld allowed to develop — with a very high human toll.

The Beginning

Much has been written and spoken about the insufficient troop strength to manage Phase IV of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and the lonely position taken by then Chief of Staff, General Shinseki, who called for several hundred thousand soldiers — not for the defeat of the Iraqi Army, rather for post-conflict work. Phase IV planning was amateurish at best, incompetent a better descriptor. This planning reflected the Rumsfeld dogma of using just enough troops for a precarious Phase III. Phase IV planning failed to identify the end state and the means of getting there. The critical component, the establishment of the New Iraqi Army, consisted of a two-page Powerpoint briefing developed by General Franks and approved by Mr. Rumsfeld. The key points of the briefing were that the Iraqi Army would be volunteer and representative of Iraq’s population; would restrict recruiting to avoid political and criminal undesirables; and would be trained by corporate trainers, not Soldiers. The goal was to develop nine light motorized Infantry battalions the first year, eighteen more the next year.

While serving as the Commanding General of the Infantry Center at Fort Benning, I was given the order to go to Iraq to create the Army on May 9, 2003, one week after the President’s speech aboard aircraft carrier Lincoln. To state the obvious, a very late order. I spent the next three weeks in meetings with my future boss, Mr. Walt Slocombe, and my team at Fort Benning to lay out the way ahead.

I reported to Baghdad on June 13, 2003, and met with Colonel Roland Tiso and four other men borrowed from the CENTCOM staff to craft the future of Iraq’s Army. The Joint Manning Document (JMD), the document that would provide me a staff of 248, would not begin to be filled until October, and would never hit the 50% mark. Between June and October 2003, I relied upon a revolving door of volunteers and men and women on loan from other staffs for between two and six weeks, dependent upon their donor unit.

It was immediately clear to all of us that we were an economy-of-force operation, a very low Department of Defense priority. Efforts to establish alliances by reaching back to the United States met with indifference at all levels. As the Coalition Provisional Authority became increasingly challenged, my operation became increasingly isolated from U.S. Armed Forces. Our allies stepped into the breach - I am very grateful to Great Britain, Australia, Spain, Jordan, Poland, Italy, and Romania for their very talented soldiers and their country’s assistance. Iraqis would very soon join my staff with superb results.

In the first two weeks, we identified the training location, let the contracts to build out the barracks, contracted the training to the Vinnell Corporation, found the uniforms and weapons and designed the Iraqi Army. Recruiting the Army began on July 7, 2003, and training began upon completion of a battalion set of barracks, on August 2, 2003. We were directed to avoid use of U.S. military assets at all costs, and to use Iraqi sources for all equipment possible. Our budget was $173 million for year one, with the objective to create nine battalions.

Two weeks into training it became obvious that we had a flawed plan — we needed soldiers to train the Iraqi Army, not contracted civilians, regardless of their competence and stellar prior-military backgrounds. We set out to change Secretary Rumsfeld’s plan.

I traveled to Jordan to set up a potential equipment buy, but found another opportunity. The Jordanian Army is the most professional Arab Army and was willing to assist. We set up a plan whereby the Jordanian Army would retrain officers from the old Iraqi Army for 10 weeks, exposing them to a professional Army, under the British model, with strong leader competencies. Those men in turn would receive non-commissioned officers trained by coalition forces at our training base in Kirkush, Iraq, and create the cadre that would train Iraqi recruits. Iraqi veterans training Iraqi soldiers under the oversight of ten-man Coalition Support Teams (CST) per battalion of Iraqi Soldiers. This is really the U.S. COHORT model of unit development.

I briefed this plan, essentially a second phase in my operation based upon a requirement to adapt, to Mr. Rumsfeld on September 5, 2003, and got his approval to proceed with an accelerated adapted plan that would produce an army of 27 battalions and associated command and control, from national to squad in the first year, and start the Navy and Air Force, with a budget of $2.2 Billion. We laid out our basing plan for the Iraqi Armed Forces and the architecture for the three services. At one point the Secretary stuck his finger at me and said, “Just don’t make this look like the American Army.” Still don’t know what he meant. He also stated that we were his last priority, behind Police, Border Troops, Iraqi National Guard or Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), and Facilities Protection Service (FPS).

That “last priority” comment would prove interesting. We had a superb team of men and women who knew exactly how to man, train and equip an Army; a budget of $2.2 Billion and a huge manpower pool from which to draw an Army. I would discover later that priority one — the Iraqi police — was an unfolding disaster.

We began to implement the plan aggressively with the arrival of the $18 Billion supplemental that held our budget, sustained a serious setback with the Pentagon rejection of the equipment contract and another when Mr. Wolfowitz withheld $253 Million destined to build out a division’s set of barracks. The Deputy Secretary was reportedly unhappy with the development of the Iraqi Police and held these funds hostage. I did not yet have responsibility for the Police. These decisions would delay unit development for several months.

In February, Mr. Wolfowitz sent then-Major General Karl Eikenberry to assess ISF development. His conclusions were that the Iraqi Armed Forces were on track, but that Police and Border Troops were not. He ordered that money and personnel should be diverted from my operation to support police development. A zero-sum game.

The result became what would be my third phase of ISF development. I reconfigured my headquarters to become the Office of Security Cooperation (OSC), with two subordinate headquarters, CMATT and CPATT, or Civil Police Assistance Training Team. I gained 23 men from Steve Casteel and a new British Brigadier to head up CPATT. On March 9, 2004, I was now charged with development of the Iraqi Armed Forces, Iraqi National Guard, Iraqi Police, Border troops and Facilities Protection Service.

Our initial assessment revealed a stunning lack of progress, a failure to understand the man, train and equip functions, an unworkable command and control network, a logistics and administration system that didn’t work — in short, a national police and border force that were in complete disarray, ill-equipped, and with untrained leadership in dysfunctional facilities. We had a lot of work to do — we had lost nine months.

General McCaffrey’s recent report reveals that Iraqi Security Forces, the second most important security forces on the planet after our own, continue to lack fundamental equipment. The Secretary of Defense has failed to resource his main effort, the objective to stand up the ISF enabling us to withdraw U.S. forces.

The Man in Charge

The President charged Secretary Rumsfeld to prosecute this war, a man who has proven himself incompetent strategically, operationally, and tactically. Mr. Rumsfeld came into his position with an extraordinary arrogance, and an agenda — to turn the military into a lighter, more lethal armed force. In fact, Rumsfeld’s vision is a force designed to meet a Warsaw Pact type force more effectively.

We are not fighting the Warsaw Pact. We are fighting an insurgency, a distributed low-tech, high-concept war that demands greater numbers of ground forces, not fewer. Mr. Rumsfeld won’t acknowledge this fact and has failed to adapt to the current situation. He has tried and continues to fight this war on the cheap. [all emphasis mine]

Heckuva job, Rummy!

It Was Surreal....

I worked for the Coalition Police Assistant Training Team during my tour in Iraq, in half of 04 and 05. The second writer, Gen. Eaton, pretty much lays it on the line. I'm the farthest thing in the world from a moonbat. I supported the decision to invade Iraq and still do, 100%. But many of the entering assumptions at the outset were proven wrong. When I got there the place was chock a block full of cops, and god bless em, from podunk Iowa who wanted to teach Iraqis how to investigate domestic violence disputes and do crime scene investigation. They were in no way, shape, or form able to teach them to fend off multi-pronged machine gun and RPG attacks on their police stations. For christ's sake, I'm a freaking senior chief supply guy from the submarine force. There's me and some reserve Army Captain trying to un-fuck, equip, and baby-sit a mechanized (what in fuck do I know about old soviet BTRs!?!) battalion of internal security forces, and we spent half our time trying to teach them that it wasn't acceptable to shit wherever they wanted and why it was important to test fire weapons they had just gotten out of the crate. We had shit for support, and relied almost exclusively on Iraqis who had a little grade school english to act as terps. It was surreal.

More:

OK, so you're Donald Rumsfeld and it's 2 months after the statue in Baghdad falls, and the road to the airport still isn't secured. What do you do? You call up the force commander and you say, what's the story with the airport road. And he says, we're working on it. So you say, do you have enough troops? Do you have everything you need? And he says yes. So you diary it for 120 days. Then you call again, and you say, it's been 6 months and the president wants to know what the deal is with the airport road. And he says, we're working on it and yeah, we got everything we need. So you're thinking, this motherfucker is shining me on. But, what the fuck, this is only the global war on terror, this is only a clash of civilizations, this is only a situation where failure is not an option. So you give him another six months. And you get the same story. So you say, let me see if I got this right. You have enough troops, you have everything you need, but after a year you haven't secured the road to the airport? Right. So, are you telling me that the troops are of low quality? NO. Are you telling me that they're poorly trained? NO. Are you telling me that they're poorly led? NO. SO WHAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM? No answer, and you don't press for one, and you wait another fucking year before the road is finally secure. And from this we are to draw two conclusions: one, Rumsfeld is a smart, tireless, hands-on, detail-oriented leader; and two, we have enough troops in Iraq. And we do draw these conclusions, but only if we're as clueless as George Bush.

--Various comments left at this rabidly pro-Bush blog (via Sullivan). It appears even some patronizing the hard-core denialist precincts of the blogosphere are beginning to acknowledge the profound incompetence and mammoth recklessness manifested by Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq. Of course to not be able to so acknowledge, especially at this late juncture, would mean that one is either blind (willfully or otherwise) or alternately a total apologist for this Administration.

September 26, 2006

Batiste

NOTE: Updated below.

My name is John Batiste. I left the military on principle on November 1, 2005, after more than 31 years of service. I walked away from promotion and a promising future serving our country. I hung up my uniform because I came to the gut-wrenching realization that I could do more good for my soldiers and their families out of uniform. I am a West Point graduate, the son and son-in-law of veteran career soldiers, a two-time combat veteran with extensive service in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq, and a life-long Republican. Bottom line, our nation is in peril, our Department of Defense’s leadership is extraordinarily bad, and our Congress is only today, more than five years into this war, beginning to exercise its oversight responsibilities. This is all about accountability and setting our nation on the path to victory. There is no substitute for victory and I believe we must complete what we started in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader. He knows everything, except “how to win.” He surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who do not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq, or the human dimension of warfare. Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build “his plan,” which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace, and set Iraq up for self-reliance. He refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency, which was an absolute certainty. Bottom line, his plan allowed the insurgency to take root and metastasize to where it is today. Our great military lost a critical window of opportunity to secure Iraq because of inadequate troop levels and capability required to impose security, crush a budding insurgency, and set the conditions for the rule of law in Iraq. We were undermanned from the beginning, lost an early opportunity to secure the country, and have yet to regain the initiative. To compensate for the shortage of troops, commanders are routinely forced to manage shortages and shift coalition and Iraqi security forces from one contentious area to another in places like Baghdad, An Najaf, Tal Afar, Samarra, Ramadi, Fallujah, and many others. This shifting of forces is generally successful in the short term, but the minute a mission is complete and troops are redeployed back to the region where they came from, insurgents reoccupy the vacuum and the cycle repeats itself. Troops returning to familiar territory find themselves fighting to reoccupy ground which was once secure. We are all witnessing this in Baghdad and the Al Anbar Province today. I am reminded of the myth of Sisyphus. This is no way to fight a counter-insurgency. Secretary Rumsfeld’s plan did not set our military up for success.

Secretary Rumsfeld’s dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies, and the good people of Iraq. He was responsible for America and her allies going to war with the wrong plan and a strategy that did not address the realities of fighting an insurgency. He violated fundamental principles of war, dismissed deliberate military planning, ignored the hard work to build the peace after the fall of Saddam Hussein, set the conditions for Abu Ghraib and other atrocities that further ignited the insurgency, disbanded Iraqi security force institutions when we needed them most, constrained our commanders with an overly restrictive de-Ba’athification policy, and failed to seriously resource the training and equipping of the Iraqi security forces as our main effort. He does not comprehend the human dimension of warfare. The mission in Iraq is all about breaking the cycle of violence and the hard work to change attitudes and give the Iraqi people alternatives to the insurgency. You cannot do this with precision bombs from 30,000 feet. This is tough, dangerous, and very personal work. Numbers of boots on the ground and hard-won relationships matter. What should have been a deliberate victory is now an uncertain and protracted challenge.

Secretary Rumsfeld built his team by systematically removing dissension. America went to war with “his plan” and to say that he listens to his generals is disingenuous. We are fighting with his strategy. He reduced force levels to unacceptable levels, micromanaged the war, and caused delays in the approval of troop requirements and the deployment process, which tied the hands of commanders while our troops were in contact with the enemy. At critical junctures, commanders were forced to focus on managing shortages rather than leading, planning, and anticipating opportunity. Through all of this, our Congressional oversight committees were all but silent and not asking the tough questions, as was done routinely during both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Our Congress shares responsibility for what is and is not happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our nation’s treasure in blood and dollars continues to be squandered under Secretary Rumsfeld’s leadership. Losing one American life due to incompetent war planning and preparation is absolutely unacceptable. The work to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime was a challenge, but it pales in comparison to the hard work required to build the peace. The detailed deliberate planning to finish the job in Iraq was not considered as Secretary Rumsfeld forbade military planners from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq. At one point, he threatened to fire the next person who talked about the need for a post-war plan. Our country and incredible military were not set up for success.

Our country has yet to mobilize for a protracted, long war. I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the Administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld failed to address the full range of requirements for this effort, and the result is one percent of the population shouldering the burdens, continued hemorrhaging of our national treasure in terms of blood and dollars, an Army and Marine Corps that will require tens of billions of dollars to reset after we withdraw from Iraq, the majority of our National Guard brigades no longer combat-ready, a Veterans Administration which is underfunded by over $3 billion, and America arguably less safe now than it was on September 11, 2001. If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents.

What do we do now? We are where we are, plagued by the mistakes of the past. Thankfully, we are Americans and with the right leadership, we can do anything. First, the American people need to take charge through their elected officials. Secretary Rumsfeld and the Administration are fighting a war in secret that threatens our democratic values. This needs to stop right now, today. Second, we must replace Secretary Rumsfeld and his entire inner circle. We deserve leaders whose judgment and instinct we can all trust. Third, we must mobilize our country for a protracted challenge, which must include conveying the “what, why, and how long” to every American, rationing to finance the totality of what we are doing, and gearing up our industrial base in a serious manner. Mortgaging our future at the rate of $1.5 billion a week and financing our great Army and Marine Corps with supplemental legislation must stop. Americans will rally behind this important cause when the rationale is properly laid out. Fourth, we must rethink our Iraq strategy. “More of the same” is not a strategy, nor is it working. This new strategy must include serious consideration of federalizing the country, other forms of Iraqi national conscription and incentives to modify behavior, and a clear focus on training and equipping the Iraqi security forces as “America’s main effort.” Fifth, we must fix our inter-agency process to completely engage and synchronize all elements of America’s national power. Unity of effort is fundamental and we need one person in charge in Iraq who pulls the levers with all U.S. Government agencies responding with 110 percent effort. Finally, we need to get serious about mending our relationships with allies and getting closer to our friends and enemies. America can not go this alone. All of this is possible, but we need leadership and responsible Congressional oversight to pull this off.

Full transcript here. If any readers have the transcript of the actual Q&A of the hearing (the above quoted language is just the opening statement), as well as that of the other witnesses, please E-mail or post link below. Many thanks in advance.

UPDATE: Thanks to the readers who suggested via E-mail I get the transcript via Lexis-Nexis, but I'm traveling overseas without easy access, which was why I was shopping around for a link. Meantime, however, Travis Sharp of the Iraqi Insider blog has more on Batiste's testimony, including this snippet from another witness, Colonel Hammes, who stated rather succinctly: "We have articulated a clear-hold-build strategy, but we have taken away the money for build and the troops for hold.” Put differently, our Administration pretends they have the will to prevail, and a convincing plan to get us there, but they aren't devoting the resources to do so, and therefore the "plan" (Batiste's delicious and appropriate use of quotation marks in his opening statement says it all) is unconvincing, to say the least. We have at least moved away from Rumsfeld grotesque obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge even that we face a serious insurgency, and so have moved in the right direction with "clear, hold, build", sound counter-insurgency doctrine, and one of our key strategies in theater. But, as always with Rumsfeld, we're under-resourcing it, so that improved strategy is nonetheless not effective enough in persuasively changing the course of the conflict.

That is to say, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika are only pretending to have the sang-froid and will and staying power and Churchillian courage to prevail in Iraq. But they are being dishonest with us. They are empty suits, presiding over a failing strategy, none of them with the energy or intellectual courage to own up and demand either that the nation sacrifice and devote adequate resources to the effort, or failing that pursue a convincing alternative strategy. Of course, it's not all their fault, as they are bowing to some realities, one suspects. If Bush gave a speech calling for re-institution of the draft, or implemention of a war tax, or even less dramatic moves but nevertheless ones that demanded more sacrifice (sending another 50,000 troops in, with casualty rates inevitably increasing, especially if we adopted less conservative force postures in keeping with best counter-insurgency practice) one presumes the nation would turn on the war all the faster (though if such moves changed the tenor of the war for the better perhaps support would not drop as much as one might suspect, although one would need real leaders at the helm explicating the need persuasively, which we don't). Worth noting too, Rove would allow none of it, with midterms looming in November.

Regardless, what we have now is not quite 'stay the course', or the comically desperate sounding 'adapting to win', or some such soundbite. What we are doing, really, is half-assing along as best we can without truly summoning all the national reservoirs of power (military, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian) to really have a real go at prevailing, assuming one believes there is still a shot at eking out a victory, an issue where intelligent people (as the previous thread indicated) can disagree. At some point, we either step up, talk to the Iranians and Syrians so as to get more intelligent about pursuing a regional strategy, make clear and signal to Iraqis we're there to truly prevail by sending in more forces, and otherwise get more serious (more robust force posture to truly "clear", not via endless rounds of whack-a-mole, but with a convincing footprint and level of sustained effort through entire areas of concern simultaneously, more funds for reconstruction and infrastructure to effectively "build", increasing American embeds operating with both Iraqi Army and even Police units so as to help develop more of an indigenuous "hold" function, and so on)--or we need to think much more about pursuing an intelligent withdrawal strategy--if perhaps we don't think the additional effort is worth it (perhaps presiding over a confederation, but holding out the prospects of a unitary state in the future, a la Dayton, is worthy of more thought). Either way, the rough status quo, with a couple soldiers dying a day, dishonors their sacrifice, because it is a sacrifice made in vain. And our leaders are not honest enough to come clean with us about this, or if they think they are being honest with us, it is only because they are living in a deluded fantasy land where fundamentalist-style verities reign, rather than the grim realities presented by the empirical evidence around them.

P.S. Bob Geiger's has got all the "YouTube" links here.

September 25, 2006

Was Failure Pre-Ordained, or Was It Gross Incompetence?

Jim Henley throws the flag at me here, and wonders whether I used the phrase "the best and the brightest" in a previous post, as Jim puts it, "with even a hint or irony." Truth be told, when I wrote that post, I immediately wondered whether drawing on David Halberstam's famous phrase would beg such criticism, but I nevertheless used the verbiage assuming readers wouldn't be too offended by the potential ironies. Perhaps it is a function of having read Larry Diamond's Squandered Victory, or Trainor's Cobra II, or now Ricks' Fiasco--but I can't help feeling a more talented team that understood counterinsurgency doctrine, believed in the import of nation-building, didn't go to war with swagger and arrogance, and relied more heavily on regional experts who understood the depths of the ferocity of ethnic tension among Kurds, Shi'a and Sunni--I can't help wondering whether a more convincing effort could have been waged, one where we might have had a better chance at creating a viable, unitary nation-state in Iraq, one moving in a genuinely democratic direction even, rather than crude majoritarianism and incipient civil war.

Dan Drezner asked the $64,000 question here, a week or so back:

"It also dredges up what will be an age-old debate -- was the failure in Iraq preordained because the mission was hopeless, or was it becaused the administration bungled the execution?"

I invite readers to comment here, with one added wrinkle. Do any of them believe, if we actually now intelligently pursued a regional strategy so as to begin full diplomatic discussions on Iraq (among other issues) with Iran and Syria (we need both of these countries cooperating, at least more than at present, if we want more than a prayer of success, and just saying "they know what they need to do" isn't going to get us any real cooperation, to say the least), if we increased troops levels so as not to simply perennially rotate personnel from Anbar to Baghdad or whatever the latest hot spot, but had enough forces in each area, and enough too to provide greater security for infrastructure development so 'clear, build, hold' was being pursued more effectively, and if we got a new Defense Secretary at the helm to inject fresh strategic oversight to the war effort at the civilian leadership level, among other critical policy corrections--could it make a difference at this late stage?

Linked to this, it seems to me, the big question in Iraq now, putting the simmering Kurdish sleeper issue aside for the moment, is whether a moderate Shi'a politics is possible in that country? Are the Malikis and, to an extent, the calming influences of the Sistanis, are they mostly fig-leafs, with a historical wave of Shi'a revanchism having been unleashed that has the Hakims and Sadrs fully in the driver's seat, or could a combination of a continued major US force presence and deft diplomacy with the Iranians (aimed at achieving new regional security understandings, and less support for radical Shi'a players in Iraq emitting from Teheran), perhaps foster, over several years yet, a more moderate Shi'a center? If this were achievable, and the Sunnis could derive comfort that Shi'a dominated government was not necessarily synonymous with vicious drill-wielding death squads, is it possible, if just, to see Iraq turn in a better direction in coming years?

This is a thin reed, to be sure, but I throw it out for discussion too, although I suspect the main issue for debate in comments will turn out to be whether people view the failure in Iraq as totally pre-ordained, or more a function of collosal blunders committed by this Administration. Given the proverbial 'furies' unleashed, and our early errors in execution, as compounded by this Administration's inability to speak with its adversaries, and make dramatic enough course corrections elsewhere, it's hard not to see us heading in a direction where a viable Iraqi central state becomes more and more a distant fantasy. But here's the rub. If Iraq splinters into a confederation, Iran will have gained its lebensraum in the south, Baghdad might well become divided (if the Sunnis aren't ultimately run out of the entire city), an embittered Sunni para-state, riddled with insurgents and supported to various degrees by sympathetic constituencies in neighboring Sunni states (Syria, Jordan and Saudi) will emerge, and the relationship between Turkey and the Kurdish north will become increasingly fraught with tension. In short, Iran will have emerged all told the biggest victor, but the prospects of regionalization of the conflict will be persistent and real, so that Teheran's interests will be threatened too (which is why, if to a limited degree, both the US and Iran's interests are aligned to the extent neither want a total melt-down in Iraq). Unlike Vietnam then, where the domino theory proved a chimerical fear, an American departure from an Iraq still unsettled and cascading into potentially greater chaos could serve to further radicalize the region, not only threatening our allies, but creating more terrorists and space for religious radicalism generally (yes, even more than to date). This is why I still hope something can be salvaged still from the horrific blunders we've committed, and this is why I still hope against hope that failure might not have been always pre-ordained, but rather been more a function of woeful incompetence, because if nothing else, it gives one at least a modicum of hope the situation can improve in coming months and years, rather than degenerate further even.

September 21, 2006

The Failed Rumsfeld Doctrine

Carl Robichaud elaborates.

A Deal?

A deal on tribunal law and detainee treatment? Devils in the details, of course, which don't appear to be public yet.

UPDATE: I've just gotten off two long-haul flights and am pretty much in wall-to-wall meetings. Still, I have had a chance to review the developments on the Hill, and hope to post commentary in the next day or so. Meantime, don't miss Ariel Dorfman in today's WaPo, asking "Are We Really So Fearful"?:

Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the "intelligence" that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?

Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America? Have we so lost our bearings that we do not realize that each of us could be that hapless Argentine who sat under the Santiago sun, so possessed by the evil done to him that he could not stop shivering?

Judging from a comment left on this blog (whose proprieter opposes the use of torture), the answer to Dorfman's questions look to be a resounding yes, alas:

At the most basic level, we are fighting to keep Muslim apes from flying planes into buildings. I dont care if we have to cut their arms off while we interrogate them. The point of fighting will not be lost if cut off arms. The point of fighting will be lost if we are treated to spectacle of people jumping out of buildings again. I use the term Muslim apes in reference to Muslim men who would kill because they are too lazy to go out and get a job. I dont use it in reference to all Muslims.

Clinton, Zelikow on the Middle East Peace Process

Bill Clinton, speaking with the FT:

And ironically all these exceedingly painful things that have happened in the Middle East may create the conditions in which some positive movement can take place because there’s so many people worried about the various things happening – the situation in Iraq, the erosion of the situation in Afghanistan, the terrible suffering of the Lebanese, the rising popularity of the Hezbollah leader you know doing it both ways - “I’ve got people in the parliament and people shooting rockets” – all these apparently bad news stories have created an unsettling sense that if we don’t want further disintegration to occur then we had better come up with a strategy that goes forward in creating a new sense of order and arrangements and order that enables everybody to live together.

So I’m not sure you won’t see some positive things come out of the Middle East in the next sixty days. Let me emphasise: I have no insider information, I have had no conversations with people in the administration, I have had no conversations with people high in the Israeli government. I think it’s time to think about what we can do to break out of this, otherwise we have three choices. We can say: “We know who our adversaries are and we can accelerate the confrontation, or we can kick the can down the road and hope the underlying realities change, or we can try to rearrange the pieces and players and try to put a puzzle together”. It seems to me the latter course is the best. Because you can always do nothing and you can always try to intensify the pressure . It wouldn’t surprise me to see some fairly interesting things come out – but I have no inside information.

Meantime, a top advisor to Condi Rice, Philip Zelikow, recently gave a speech at the Washington Insitute for Near East Policy where he said:

The significance of the Arab-Israeli dispute across these problems is, I think, obvious to all of you. What I would want to emphasize is if you see the threats in a way something like the way I've just described them, think then about what is the coalition you need to amass in order to combat those threats. Who are the key members of that coalition? You can imagine the United States, key European allies, the state of Israel and the Arab moderates - Arabs who seek a peaceful future. You could call it the coalition of the builders, not just a coalition of the willing. The coalition of the builders as opposed to the coalition of the destroyers.

"What would bind that coalition and help keep them together is a sense that the Arab-Israeli issues are being addressed, that they see a common determination to sustain an active policy that tries to deal with the problems of Israel and the Palestinians. We don't want this issue doesn't have the real corrosive effects that it has, or the symbolic corrosive effects that it causes in undermining some of the friends we need friends to confront some of the serious dangers we must face together."

Zelikow expanded on these remarks in the Q&A, including this snippet:

For various reasons, I believe the Europeans and the Arab moderates are central allies in the coalition we need to forge against our most dangerous enemies. Now, if you start with that as a premise then what you always need to do when you share power is you share a common mission with friends. You have to think about what they want and what they need too. For the Arab moderates and for the Europeans, some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about. We can rail against that belief; we can find it completely justifiable, but it's fact. That means an active policy on the Arab-Israeli dispute is an essential ingredient to forging a coalition that deals with the most dangerous problems.

I would take that even further. I would say that it is essential for the state of Israel because, in some ways, I do not believe that the Palestinian threat, per se, is the most dangerous threat to the future of the state of Israel. If Israel, for example, is especially worried about Iran and sees it as an existential threat, then it's strongly in the interest of Israel to want the American-led coalition to work on an active policy that begins to normalize that situation. It's an essential glue that binds a lot of these problems together. And so ironically, even if your primary concern is not the Palestinian danger, you have to give it primary attention while you're looking at other problems as well."

The point here is not to suggest there is any strict linkage between a prospective so-called coalition of the builders (Zelikow's phrase) regarding Iran and bolstering the Middle East peace process, which I don't think is the case. The point is rather than one can't help feeling there is finally a slight uptick of serious talk in the Beltway (echoed by Clinton, albeit with the caveats that he has no insider knowledge) about finally getting back to seriously thinking about how to address the Israeli-Palestinian situation more attentively. To the extent Zelikow places the importance of same into a larger strategic lens, and to the extent he might reflect Condi Rice's thinking, this is a good thing. But again, I see no explicit linkage between Iran policy and Arab-Israeli conflict resolution, as a State Department spokesman hastened to clarify.

More Support for McCain

WaPo:

Mr. Bush also wants the CIA to be able to treat its detainees to such practices as "cold cell," or induced hypothermia, in which detainees are held naked in near-freezing temperatures and repeatedly doused with water; "long standing," in which prisoners are handcuffed in an uncomfortable standing position and forced to remain there for up to 40 hours; and prolonged sleep deprivation.

Throughout the world and for decades, such practices have been called torture. That's what the United States called them when they were used by the Soviet KGB. As the president himself tacitly acknowledges, they violate Geneva and other international conventions as well as current U.S. law. News that the United States has used these techniques -- as well as waterboarding, an ancient torture technique that simulates drowning -- has gravely damaged U.S. standing in the world and the fight against terrorism. It increases the danger that captured U.S. servicemen will be exposed to similar treatment by nations that might otherwise feel obliged to respect the Geneva standards.

When Mr. Bush was asked Friday whether he wasn't in effect seeking sanction for torture, he responded with an evasion. He claimed that the Geneva Conventions' Common Article 3 is "very vague" and that his proposal would provide "clarity" for CIA professionals. In fact, the opposite is true.

Common Article 3, which prohibits cruel treatment and humiliation, is an inflexible standard. The U.S. military, which lived with it comfortably for decades before the Bush administration, just reembraced it after a prolonged battle with the White House. The Army issued a thick manual this month that tells interrogators exactly what they can and cannot do in complying with the standard. The nation's most respected military leaders have said that they need and want nothing more to accomplish the mission of detaining and interrogating enemy prisoners -- and that harsher methods would be counterproductive.

Mr. Bush wants to replace these clear rules with a flexible and subjective standard -- one that would legalize any method that does not "shock the conscience." What shocks the conscience? According to Mr. Bush's Justice Department, the torture techniques described above -- and at least in the past, waterboarding -- do not, "in certain circumstances." So Mr. Bush's real objection to Common Article 3 is not that it is vague. It is that it will not permit abusive practices that he isn't willing publicly to discuss or defend.

Rather than admit that he wants to legalize disappearances and torture, Mr. Bush ominously warns that "the program" won't continue unless Congress passes his bill. He says "time's running out," even though it's not. There are no detainees in the CIA prisons at the moment, according to the president, and the only clock running out is that measuring the midterm election campaign. There is no need for Congress to act in the next two weeks. But if it does, the clear answer to Mr. Bush's question, endorsed by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former secretary of state Colin L. Powell and a host of other responsible Republican and military leaders, is "no." For both moral and practical reasons, the country should reject this fundamental violation of its principles. [emphasis added]

Amen. This isn't about increased clarity. Just the opposite. As the editorialists at the Washington Post point out, the Geneva-compliant Army Field Manual spells out detailed, effective, clear interrogation techniques. Bush wants to continue to shroud detainee interrogations in secrecy, the better so he can resort to torture like induced hypothermia, techniques which would make an old KGB man like Vladimir Putin proud.

Meantime, John McCain, a couple days back: "By the way, I forgot to mention this: George Shultz said I could say that he strongly favors our position." Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State has always been a very decent man, and it is nice to see him step up with this statement. Pity Caspar Weinberger (UPDATE: See correction below) and Frank Carlucci, other Reagan-era heavyweights, haven't yet done the same. Finally, note we've now got five former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs standing behind McCain:

Five former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff have backed efforts by a group of Republican senators opposing President George W. Bush's plan to write rules dealing with the handling of terrorism suspects, one of the senators announced Wednesday.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the five former military leaders have written letters opposing the administration's version on legislation governing the treatment of detainees. Ex-chief Colin Powell, who earlier stated his opposition to the Bush proposal, was joined in that position by former chiefs John Shalikashvili, William Crowe, John Vessey and Henry `Hugh" Shelton, McCain's office said in a statement.

5 Former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs. Senatorial leaders with distinguished military experience like John Warner and John McCain. George Schultz. And I can't help suspecting the President's own father, if he didn't have to stand by his son because of family bonds, would strongly disagree with the Cheney-Addington position too. Meantime I note Bill Kristol has picked up the Standard's pom-poms so as to cheerlead the pro-torture position. Can we safely assume his chances of enjoying a high level policymaking role in a potential McCain Administration have been reduced (see earlier speculation about McCain's key foreign policy advisors here)? Certainly after penning said sad little ditty, one might hope so...

CORRECTION: An important reminder from uber-commenter Zathras re: Caspar Weinberger. Apologies to all for the error, not least Mr. Weinberger's family. I was thinking of leading Reagan era alum, and writing in haste had forgotten that Mr. Weinberger had died last March. My apologies again.

Detainee Treatment Developments

A few positive developments on the detainee treatment front: Specter wants to eye-ball the bill, even James Sensenbrenner wants the House side Judiciary Committee to have a look-see too, and eight more Republicans have joined McCain, Graham and Warner (Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Richard Lugar, Mike DeWine, Gordon Smith, John Sununu, Lincoln Chafee, and Chuck Hagel). The Congress remains, on the whole, rather woefully supine, but we are at last seeing increasing signs of life. That's to be welcomed, of course, but the amount of remedial work required remains very significant indeed. As Bruce Fein has recently written, about what he rightly describes as "congressional dereliction":

The most frightening claim made by Bush with congressional acquiescence is reminiscent of the lettres de cachet of prerevolutionary France. (Such letters, with which the king could order the arrest and imprisonment of subjects without trial, helped trigger the storming of the Bastille.) In the aftermath of 9/11, Mr. Bush maintained that he could pluck any American citizen out of his home or off of the sidewalk and detain him indefinitely on the president’s finding that he was an illegal combatant. No court could second-guess the president. Bush soon employed such monarchial power to detain a few citizens and to frighten would-be dissenters, and Republicans in Congress either cheered or fiddled like Nero while the Constitution burned. The Supreme Court ultimately entered the breach and repudiated the president in 2004’s Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Republicans similarly yawned as President Bush ordained military tribunals to try accused war criminals based on secret evidence and unreliable hearsay in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention. The Supreme Court again was forced to countervail the congressional dereliction by holding the tribunals illegal in 2006’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Republicans have shied from challenging Bush by placing party loyalty above institutional loyalty, contrary to the expectations of the Founding Fathers. They do so in the fear that embarrassing or discrediting a Republican president might reverberate to their political disadvantage in a reverse coat-tail effect.

Meantime, while I can understand the Democrats sitting back and watching with glee the internecine Republican warfare, when you are dealing with issues of as much import as ensuring no torture is allowed under American law, I'd expect more from a serious opposition party. Sitting on the sidelines is rather lame, isn't it?

Democrats, who have spent the past few years in a constant attack mode against the Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders, appear to have discovered a new strategy — serving as passive spectators of the GOP infighting.

“The president picked a battle, and he thought it would be with Democrats, but it’s been with Republicans,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Asked where his party stood on the details of setting up military tribunals for suspected terrorists, Reid gladly demurred.

“We have to see what the Republicans do to erase fissures among themselves,” he said.

September 17, 2006

Mr. President: Don't You Dare Disband The CIA Interrogation Program

I try hard to respect the Office of the President of the United States, but it is truly a miserable wretch of a man who would threaten to disband the CIA interrogation program if he doesn't get his wish to eviscerate a good deal of Article 3 compliance thereto, as the President threatened at a press conference last week. This hullabaloo about "outrages against personal dignity" versus "shocking the conscience" is a tempest in a teapot. Outrages against personal dignity are like pornography, which is to say, you know it when you see it (sometimes, indeed, they fuse somewhat, like Rumsfeld's Pentagon authorized tactic at Guantanamo of having female guards rub their breasts in the face of a male detainee, before smearing fake menstrual blood on him, in a particularly noxious use of our military personnel).

Article 3 compliant interrogations have stood us in good stead for decades, and there is absolutely no convincing reason for a carve-out allowing the CIA to avoid compliance with its provisions. We know that Army Field Manual compliant interrogations are more than effective, and we know further that torture often leads to false confessions and unreliable information. So if Congress has the will to face the President down (which they must), the CIA interrogation program should be allowed to continue, but with the interrogations pursued in accordance with the requirements of the Geneva Convention. This is, after all, how the uniformed services are again now (after belated remedial action) satisfactorily interrogating detainees. Bush, like a petulant adolescent who risks not having his way, is threatening to shut down the entire CIA progam if his gutting of portions of Article 3 doesn't prevail through Congress. Then, the cowardly pro-torture crowd, should god forbid a terror attack subsequently occur, will blame those noted anti-American appeasers and defeatists like John Warner, Colin Powell, Jack Vessey, Lindsay Graham and John McCain for allowing the carnage.

One would think even this President would not be so reckless as to shut down an important interrogation program merely because he'd have to comply with Article 3, which would be more than effective regardless. Or so one would at least hope. But he will likely disingenuously argue he cannot abide risking CIA interrogators facing criminal liability because of vague and confusing standards, as if "shocking the conscience" is crystal-clear black-letter law, and "outrages against personal dignity" constitute some amorphous, hyper-confusing morass of conflicting standards. For decades these standards have been more than clear, so this rationale must be seen for what it is, utter and complete claptrap. Appropriate legal safeguards for interrogators can be drafted into the law, but the bedrock principle here must be total fidelity to Article 3 norms, not so we here can preen as detainee rights purists, but rather so as to preserve America's moral leadership on an issue so critical to the ideological component of the war on terror, so as to prevent other governments from rushing to a race to the bottom on detainee and interrogation treatment standards, and not least, to better be able to protect our own POWs, from a position of moral strength, when they are, as they inevitably will be, captured by foreign forces.

Of course, very little if anything surprises me anymore with this White House. If Bush actually attempts to cynically shut down this program, we must all passionately shout from the rooftops for it to be kept active, of course in a Geneva compliant incarnation. And if he does nevertheless shut it down, because he insists on enshrining a right to torture in American law, via Addingtonian subterfuge, and a terror attack does occur, let him not dare accuse those who fought for the preservation of basic standards of American dignity and morality with the bloodshed. We will not tolerate this cynical demagoguery, and if it comes to it we will have to turn it on him, and argue his disbanding of the program, if anything, was more of a contributing factor.

...The Whole Universe to Improve...

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, in a must-read WaPo piece:

Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.

He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?

"Be careful what you wish for," Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen's resume to O'Beirne's office.

Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?

The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.

"Are you sure?" Hallen said to Foley. "I don't have a finance background."

It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be the project manager. He would rely on other people to get things done. He would be "the main point of contact."

Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked. Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free enterprise.

The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority.

Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system.

Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting a new securities law. "People are broke and bewildered," broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. "Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were."

Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was unrealistic. "It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn't be accomplished," he said.

But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."

Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."

To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.

The exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however, saw themselves in charge.

Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more months for the computerized trading system to be up and running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and that's how they'd do it again.

The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make the stock market a target for insurgents.

When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. "We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize," Tabatabai said of Hallen. "Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia."

More:

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.

He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."

But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.

Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.

He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team --who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.

Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was "to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don't get health care unless you go to a hospital."

But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public health challenge.

Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.

To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption, physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an approved list, known as a formulary.

Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia, and start buying from the United States.

He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center in San Antonio.

A few weeks later, three formulary experts were on their way to Iraq.

The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was: "Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home." By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary "really wasn't that bad." Second, his mission was really about "redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale." Third, Haveman and his advisers "really didn't know what they were doing."

Haveman "viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack," said George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's health team. "Somehow if you went into the ghettos and projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire state -- that's what he was coming to save." [ed. note: Kinda like the death rates in Philly, eh?]

Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.

Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial first step in improving the distribution of medicines. "It was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and distribute them," he said.

When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.

Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.

The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share what they could. He sought to increase production at a state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was a fool's errand.

"We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs," he said. "But the Americans did not understand that."

Brings to mind Pyle from Graham Greene's The Quiet American:

Pyle was absorbed already in the Dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West; he was determined ... to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world. Well, he was in his element now with the whole universe to improve.

We set loose a whole gaggle of Pyles to run around cluelessly in Mesopotamia--mostly poorly qualified ones, chosen on the basis of ideological affiliation, in the main. The innocence would almost be poignant (implement comprehensive new securities regs! overhaul the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement & delivery system!) if the ramifications haven't been so deathly. It's a national and international disgrace, and those who helped enable this cocksure, dismally executed adventure (including this writer), without calculating for the profound incompetence of this Administration, will always have much to answer for. We must now focus on lessons learned, including ensuring that a nation-building effort is never again run via such cronyistic folly, but rather by finding and incentivizing the best and the brightest to man the effort, selected mostly by rigorous meritocratic criteria. Rumsfeld initially demanded ownership of this nation-building effort and ran it with his typically cheap bravura, a frivolity that would have led a better man to long ago resign in shame (it should be noted too that the President and the Vice President are totally complicit in the mostly bungled effort).

Regardless, and as often, the heaviest burden has fallen on our military. Today, we have very talented men like Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli trying to turn around the legacy of the first 2-3 years of disasterous policy missteps chronicled judiciously and non-polemically in Tom Rick's Fiasco, in Bernard Trainor's Cobra II, in articles like this one today that I've extensively quoted above. Rather than occupying themselves with imbecilic thoughts of 'shock therapy' to liberalize Iraq's economy, or new securities regs, or reciting numbers of hospitals open (even when they lack the most basic equipment), they instead understand that the primary issues are ones of security, of infrastructure build-out, of mundane but critical matters like reducing the amount of trash on the streets in places like Sadr City. Men like Chiarelli, in short, are trying to supply the strategic oversight leadership, in addition to their military mandates, that Tony Zinni, among so many others, know has been so sorely lacking since the inception of this Iraq adventure. So we are demanding even more of these Generals in the field, because we have only incompetents at the helm in Washington. In short, our civilian leadership's recklessness has been nothing short of scandalous, but at least the war has now in the main been belatedly outsourced to men like Abizaid, Casey and Chiarelli. But this is a lot to ask of them, and with their political overseers mostly discredited, spent forces--I believe at very least a new Defense Secretary is owed them. Which is why, I suspect, people like Batiste and Swannack, among others, are so hopping mad he's still sitting in the E-Ring, the scene of the crime, if you will, one marked by negligence so gross it's hard to fathom even today.

September 16, 2006

Vessey on Article 3

Here's General Vessey's letter, the one Colin Powell referenced in his recent note to John McCain dealing with the same subject:

It's interesting that fighting to uphold conservative, traditional military values has one tarred as an appeasement-minded terrorist-lover these days, or, of course, just "confused." Interesting times...

Note: General Vessey's address omitted from the document, for privacy. Thanks for reader SH for providing a copy.

September 15, 2006

Counter-Insurgency Tactics

Ann Scott Tyson:

With a bikers bandanna tied under his helmet, the Special Forces team sergeant gunned a Humvee down a desert road in Iraq's volatile Anbar province. Skirting the restive town of Hit, the team of a dozen soldiers crossed the Euphrates River into an oasis of relative calm: the rural heartland of the powerful Albu Nimr tribe.

Green Berets skilled in working closely with indigenous forces have enlisted one of the largest and most influential tribes in Iraq to launch a regional police force -- a rarity in this Sunni insurgent stronghold. Working deals and favors over endless cups of spiced tea, they built up their wasta -- or pull -- with the ancient tribe, which boasts more than 300,000 members. They then began empowering the tribe to safeguard its territory and help interdict desert routes for insurgents and weapons. The goal, they say, is to spread security outward to envelop urban trouble spots such as Hit.

But the initial progress has been tempered by friction between the team of elite troops and the U.S. Army's battalion that oversees the region. At one point this year, the battalion's commander, uncomfortable with his lack of control over a team he saw as dangerously undisciplined, sought to expel it from his turf, officers on both sides acknowledged.

The conflict in the Anbar camp, while extreme, is not an isolated phenomenon in Iraq, U.S. officers say. It highlights two clashing approaches to the war: the heavy focus of many regular U.S. military units on sweeping combat operations; and the more fine-grained, patient work Special Forces teams put into building rapport with local leaders, security forces and the people -- work that experts consider vital in a counterinsurgency.

"This war was fought with a conventional mind-set. The conventional units are bogged down in cities doing the same old thing," said the Special Forces team's 44-year-old sergeant, who like all the Green Berets interviewed was not allowed to be quoted by name for security reasons. "It's not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away. . . . These insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships." The real battles, he said, are unfolding "in a sheik's house, squatting in the desert eating with my right hand and smoking Turkish cigarettes and trying to influence tribes to rise up against an insurgency."

More here (be sure not to miss the chart on page 10). A judicious look at the "unsuccessful" column of the chart reads like a succinct precis of the blundering Rumsfeld approach, doesn't it? The past 12 plus months, of course, commanders have gotten more autonomy to fight the war smarter, but they are still grappling with the legacy of Rumsfeld's hubris-ridden collosal missteps, the continued poverty of strategic civilian leadership emitting from the top, and now too a low-intensity civil war afoot in strategic parts of the country. It's a grim picture, alas. One thing is for certain. The war might not yet be lost. But we certainly won't win it with the strategic civilian leadership currently at the helm. They are profoundly discredited, and with few new ideas. Our forces in the field desperately need higher quality leadership in Washington. It's a profound shame it's not being made available.

It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again....

.... here.

Thank You, Mr. Powell

More, please.

P.S. If anyone has a copy of Vessey's letter, please send on, as hasty googling didn't uncover it.

UPDATE: WaPo:

"Somehow I think there's this construct in people's minds that we want to restore the rack and start getting people screaming, having their bones crunching," Snow said. "And that's not at all what this is about." He said Powell did not discuss the issue with the White House before releasing his letter.

"They don't understand what we're trying to do here," he said of Powell and retired Army Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., who wrote a similar letter. Asked if Powell is "confused," Snow said, "Yes."

McCain, who was tortured as a Vietnam War prisoner, dismissed similar comments in the committee session, saying Powell knew exactly what he was doing.

It's almost unfair and cruel to watch. Giants like McCain and Powell and Warner being accused of confusion by genial court attendants fresh off from lapping at Roger Ailes' trough. Let's help Tony retain a smidgen of dignity up there, OK?

Cowardice Leads To Bad Law

A cri de coeur, and a righteous one, from Jack Balkin. An important post from Hilzoy. Meantime, Katherine, also writing over at ObWi, has been blogging up a storm too. More background notes from Katherine, with loads of links here and here.

September 14, 2006

The Specter of Nuclear Terror

Graham Allison, writing about the specter of nuclear terror, in an excellent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

In sum, my best judgment is that based on current trends, a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States is more likely than not in the decade ahead. Developments in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea leave Americans more vulnerable to a nuclear 9/11 today than we were five years ago. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has said that he thinks that I underestimate the risk. In the judgment of most people in the national security community, including former Sen. Sam Nunn, the risk of a terrorist detonating a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil is higher today than was the risk of nuclear war at the most dangerous moments in the Cold War. Reviewing the evidence, Warren Buffett, the world's most successful investor and a legendary oddsmaker in pricing insurance policies for unlikely but catastrophic events like earthquakes, has concluded: "It's inevitable. I don't see any way that it won't happen."

It is difficult to disagree with Buffet. Nonetheless, I believe that the largely unrecognized good news is that this ultimate catastrophe is, in fact, preventable. There exists a feasible, affordable checklist of actions that, if taken, would shrink the risk of nuclear terrorism to nearly zero. The strategic narrow in this challenge is to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons or the materials from which weapons could be made. If this choke point can be squeezed tightly enough, we can deny terrorists the means necessary for the most deadly of all terror acts. As a fact of physics: No HEU or plutonium, no nuclear explosion, no nuclear terrorism.

My book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, proposes a strategy for pursuing that agenda, organized under a "Doctrine of Three Nos":

No loose nukes requires securing all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material, as quickly as possible. The United States and Russia have proven themselves adept at locking up valuable or dangerous items: Gold is not stolen from Fort Knox, nor treasures from the Kremlin Armory.

No new nascent nukes means no new domestic capabilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) contains a loophole that allows nations to develop these capacities as civilian programs, withdraw from the NPT, utilize equipment and know-how received as a beneficiary of the NPT, and proceed to build nuclear weapons. The proposition of no new nascent nukes acknowledges what the national security community has belatedly come to realize: HEU and plutonium are bombs about to hatch.

No new nuclear weapon states unambiguously declares the nuclear club will not expand beyond its current eight members. Without endorsing the behavior of current nuclear powers, this principle recognizes that the most urgent task is to stop the bleeding before the problem gets worse. The urgent test of this principle is North Korea, which now stands three-quarters of the way across that line. In February 2006, North Korea declared itself a nuclear weapon state, but it has not yet conducted a nuclear test to gain forced entry into the group of nuclear nations. Preventing Pyongyang from becoming a "Nukes 'R' Us" for terrorists is the biggest challenge the international community faces in the Asian arena.

But what has been done on these fronts to combat nuclear terrorism? Are we any safer from a nuclear terrorist attack than we were on 9/11?

After the Trade Center towers fell, President George W. Bush declared war on terrorism; toppled the Taliban, eliminating Al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan; and articulated a new doctrine in which the United States would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." The Bush administration made an important conceptual advance in recognizing that the gravest danger lies in what Vice President Dick Cheney termed the "nexus between terrorists and weapons of mass destruction." To minimize that threat, the United States successfully sponsored U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, which requires states to criminalize proliferation; promoted a new Proliferation Security Initiative, which expands upon existing legal frameworks to allow the interception of WMD-related cargo; and persuaded other members of the G-8 Global Partnership to match a U.S. commitment of $1 billion annually over the next decade to secure and eliminate former Soviet nuclear weapons. Furthermore, in February 2005 Bush leveraged his personal friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach an agreement at Bratislava that each leader would make securing loose nuclear material his personal responsibility and that their respective energy ministers should meet and report regularly on progress toward that goal.

On the other hand, in combating what Bush has rightly identified as "the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States" and the only terrorist attack that could kill a million Americans in one blow, the Bush administration has demonstrated a puzzling absence of focus, energy, and urgency. Indeed, some of the administration's actions have, in fact, made U.S. citizens more vulnerable.

September 11, 2001 demonstrated terrorists' capacity for mega-terrorism. As former CIA Director Porter Goss told Congress last year, "There is sufficient [Russian] material unaccounted for so that it would be possible for those with know-how to construct [a] nuclear weapon." But as of 2005, as the most comprehensive review of what has and has not been done on this agenda concludes, only 54 percent of the buildings in the former Soviet Union holding nuclear material had received comprehensive security upgrades.

Before 9/11, North Korea had, at most, two nuclear weapons worth of plutonium (acquired during the presidency of George H. W. Bush). Today, North Korea has reprocessed enough plutonium for eight additional nuclear bombs and restarted its Yongbyon reactor, where it is producing enough plutonium for two additional bombs a year. In 2003, Tehran offered to negotiate with the United States over Iran's nuclear program and even halt its support for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. In the period since the United States rejected that proposal, Iran has defied the U.N. Security Council's demand that it suspend uranium enrichment-related activity at Isfahan and Natanz, accelerated its program, and elected a new president who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

On its current trajectory, Iran could join North Korea in becoming a nuclear weapon state before the end of the decade, triggering what the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change calls an "erosion of the nonproliferation regime" to a point that "could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation." Having called for war against Iraq on false premises, the Bush administration has paradoxically increased the WMD threat. According to the CIA, while the good news is that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda command can no longer operate headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan, the bad news is that Iraq now provides "recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself." As jihadi networks strengthen in Iraq, on one hand, and Iran and North Korea accelerate their fissile material production, on the other, the likelihood of a deadly nexus between a terrorist buyer and nuclear seller increases. Reversing these trends will require a new strategic approach to the threat of nuclear terrorism. [my emphasis]

The entire article is worth reading. I'll have more on this soon, but in the meantime am opening this up to comments. Some of the issues worth discussing are quite obvious. Do people agree an act of nuclear terror is as probable as serious people like Warren Buffet and Graham Allison believe? How feasible is it, really, to effectuate Allison's so-called "three no's"? And has the Bush Administration's war in Iraq enhanced, rather than decreased, the chances of nuclear terror? There are many other issues embedded in Allison's article, but these are a few of them to kick off discussion. Somewhere here too, I suspect, our policy towards not only North Korea and Iran, but also India, is worth pondering in more detail. One dreams at times of some grand package deal creating a WMD-free zone in the Middle East and South Asia some day, with Israel, Pakistan and India giving up their nukes, and Iran forsaking development of same--so that the nuclear club remains just the core five, US, UK, France, Russia and China (thus greatly reducing proliferation risks), but alas, as I said, that's mostly a dream, I fear.

Recommended: Paulson Speech on China

Hank Paulson, new U.S. Secretary of the Treasury:

A big part of being a global economic leader is a commitment to open markets at home. China's record of reform is remarkable by any standard. But much remains to be done. The tasks faced by Beijing are so daunting that the biggest risk we face is not that China will overtake the U.S., but that China won't move ahead with the reforms necessary to sustain its growth and to address the very serious problems facing the nation.

These problems range from modernizing and reforming the rural agriculture economy, to providing an adequate pension system and other safety nets, to developing capital markets that have lagged far behind the needs of China's economy, to freeing up an inflexible currency regime that hinders the efficient allocation of capital and the achievement of balanced sustainable growth. The Chinese economy itself is becoming increasingly difficult to manage as it becomes larger and more complex, but is still only part way between a managed and market economy.

China now faces a difficult but essential phase in its development and the reforms it must continue to pursue will not be easy. Up to now, rapid growth has been achieved by shifting excess labor from agriculture and state-owned enterprises to market-based manufacturing. Today, as the most obvious sources of inefficiency are disappearing, growth will depend on raising productivity which, in my judgment, will require markets to allocate capital as opposed to administrative decisions. The Chinese have an astonishingly high savings rate – 50 percent of GDP – because Chinese households face so many uncertainties.

China needs a more harmonious, more balanced pattern of growth that gives Chinese households more income and the confidence to spend it.

These challenges are made even more difficult by the fact that within China, as in the U.S., there are loud voices espousing anti-reform, protectionist sentiment. In China this resistance stems from a number of factors including that the benefits of this economic expansion have been spread unevenly among its citizens and that some influential people have never fully embraced the need to open up the Chinese economy to competition.

This protectionist sentiment is evidenced by increasing levels of public discontent, demonstrations, and anti-reform articles written by prominent academics.

Yet, it is impossible to overstate the importance of China moving forward with liberalization. First and most importantly, only reform can guarantee the future growth that the Chinese people expect and deserve. Second, liberalization sends a clear signal of China's willingness to assume its role as a global economic leader. And third, reform will do much to ease rising anti-Chinese sentiment.

Over the last couple of years in my prior role, I was struck by the fact that some of the anti-trade sentiment manifesting itself outside our nation is turning into anti-China sentiment as more people in nations around the world are viewing China as a symbol embodying both the real and imagined downsides of global competition. They are increasingly blaming China for economic dislocations in their nations and are increasingly viewing China with apprehension.

Similarly, I've seen that the level of anti-trade and anti-China sentiment in the United States is also significant and growing. I believe that if China doesn't move quickly to continue reforming its economy, it will face a backlash from other international economic stakeholders. This backlash would not benefit any of us...

...Without question, the nation must modernize its financial sector, open up its capital account, and move to a more consumption-based model of growth. A competitive, well-regulated financial system and the free flow of capital will help reduce the extraordinarily high levels of precautionary savings and allocate capital to its most efficient use, which will help raise productivity and living standards. China must also pursue fiscal and regulatory polices that address the investment/savings imbalance.

These changes will help create the millions of jobs that China needs to generate annually, and will help create markets for U.S. exports of goods and services to China.

China faces several critical, immediate challenges. The first is the pressing need to put in place widely-accepted, market-based tools to keep its economy from veering out of control. A much more flexible, market-driven exchange rate along with a more nimble, self-determined monetary policy are key ingredients to stable and sustainable, non-inflationary growth.

Accordingly, maintaining and relying on an overly rigid exchange rate and outdated administrative controls increases the risk of boom and bust cycles. Also, to be under estimated only at China's own peril, is the fact that their currency exchange rate is increasingly being viewed by their critics as a symbol of unfair competition.

Another pressing issue is greater protection for intellectual property rights. China cannot achieve its goal of being a modern economy if it fails to adhere to the rule of law and fair trade and encourage the innovation that is the engine of growth for developed – and developing – economies...

...The United States has a huge stake in a prosperous, stable China – a China able and willing to play its part as a global economic leader. We are not afraid of Chinese competition. We welcome it.

We want China to assume its rightful place as a responsible member of the international community. The choices you make will affect many things from the air we breathe to price of our farm products. And, of course, of vital importance to you is a United States of America with a healthy, growing economy which believes you are committed to being a responsible global economic leader dedicated to moving forward with your economic reform agenda and fair trade.

These reforms will not be easy, and they will take time. This is why we must take a strategic view of our relationship with China. Both in China and in the United States, we must not allow ourselves to be captured by harmful political rhetoric or those who engage in demagoguery. Instead, we must realize that the U.S./Chinese relationship is truly generational and demands a long-term strategic economic engagement on our common issues of interest. [emphasis added]

Read the whole thing. I suspect with Bob Zeollick having left the State Department, Mr. Paulson will pick up much of the slack on China policy. This speech is very impressive, and it is good to know that, in sharp distinction to other top Cabinet posts, we've got the best of the best serving at Treasury.

Zilmer's (Duty-Bound) Verbal Contortions

Major General Richard C Zilmer: "For what we are trying to achieve out here I think our force levels are about right...Now, if that mission statement changes — if there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight — then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here.."

I'll resist the temptation to "translate" that comment, but readers may wish to. Note I certainly don't hold this tangled verbiage against Zilmer, as he is forced to tip-toe gingerly over a verbal minefield to avoid contradicting his boss.

MORE: Tony Snow: "As a matter of fact, the central mission to the United States is to train Iraqi forces so they can do the job. They get better intelligence. They know the people who are there. It is their country. And it's their obligation and responsibility."

No Tony, it's really our "obligation and responsibility". You break it, you own it. But the United States is risking essentially abdicating that responsibility, amidst a sea of collosal missteps, bitter recriminations, unleashed historical forces increasingly beyond the occupying forces control, sheer incompetence, and an exhausted war council denuded in the public eye as abjectly discredited. I suspect Bush's final act will be to simply pretend he has to will to persevere in Iraq, via stock speeches and a continued ultimately inadequate troop presence, while likely presiding over the loss of the war (if a more serious successor arrives too late to resuscitate the effort). He's so deluded, however, that he'll think he won it. Just like we don't torture. Faith and ideology will have trumped empirical evidence, again.

September 13, 2006

Another Blogospheric Scoop!

I note quickly in passing that some blogospheric eminences declared Gulbuddin Hekmatyar captured a couple nights back. Except he wasn't. Such eager-beaver fancy appears to have gotten picked up by other hifalutin' outlets too. Good news, even if we have to concoct it from thin air! Meantime, more bogus claptrap being (predictably) peddled here. I suspect serious people have figured out who the real "bozos" are, however. Hint: They're, for example, those who would believe the Syrians would concoct such a spot of street theater to stave off a US attack, and other such nonsense. Rather, one feels compelled to signal to varied ignorants in our midst, we've got a real growing problem in Syria--with Islamist sentiment erupting dangerously--not least given the misadventure next door in Iraq. Note too the hilarious sourcing ("(a)ccording to well informed Syrian sources"). Yes, yes: I'm sure they're quite well informed indeed, certainly in terms of knowing full well how to feed sophomoric and jocular fantasies to the gullible and naive, that is.

P.S. Capturing Hekmatyar would be huge, but I suspect most people blogging about it have nary a clue who he is (e.g. "bad guy bagged", goes the typically deep analysis). Regardless, count me still relying on the dastardly MSM for most of my breaking news, as well as "counter-terrorism" analysis, I'm afraid.

Wisdom from Dartmouth

Jeffrey Hart, Professor of English at Dartmouth, conservative, and former speechwriter to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan:

On the subject of democratizing Iraq and the Middle East, Bush has voiced some of the most extraordinarily ideological statements ever made by a sitting president. “Human cultures can be vastly different,” Bush told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute in February 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. “Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on earth…For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror.”

Happy thoughts, breathtakingly false. If this amounts to a worldview, it’s certainly not that of Burke. Indeed, Bush would probably be more at home among the revolutionary French, provided his taxes remained low, than among Burke’s Rockingham Whigs. (Burke would of course deny Bush admission to the Whigs in the first place, as Bush would be seen as an ideological comrade of the philosophes —if a singularly unreflective one.) It’s no surprise that longtime conservatives such as Francis Fukuyama, George F. Will, and William F. Buckley have all distanced themselves from Bush’s brand of adventurism.

The United States has seen political swings and produced its share of extremists, but its political character, whether liberals or conservatives have been in charge, has always remained fundamentally Burkean. The Constitution itself is a Burkean document, one that slows down decisions to allow for “deliberate sense” and checks and balances. President Bush has nearly upended that tradition, abandoning traditional realism in favor of a warped and incoherent brand of idealism. (No wonder Bush supporter Fred Barnes has praised him as a radical.) At this dangerous point in history, we must depend on the decisions of an astonishingly feckless chief executive: an empty vessel filled with equal parts Rove and Rousseau.

Successful government by either Democrats or Republicans has always been, above all, realistic. FDR, Eisenhower, and Reagan were all reelected by landslides and rank as great presidents who responded to the world as it is, not the world as they would have it. But ideological government deserves rejection, whatever its party affiliation. This November, the Republicans stand to face a tsunami of rejection. They’ve earned it.

Meanwhile, as we wait out our time with this president, we can look forward to the latest in a stream of rhetoric that increasingly makes Woodrow Wilson look like Machiavelli. “One, I believe there’s an Almighty,” Bush declared this April, “and secondly I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody’s soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live to be free. I believe liberty is universal.”

Well, it is certainly taking a long time for the plans of the Almighty to show results in the actual world. As I write this, sectarian violence in Iraq is escalating. I’d call my skepticism “conservative,” but Bushism has poisoned the very word. [my emphasis]

Amen to the bolded part. It's come to that, as it's that bad. Turn them out!

More from Bruce Bartlett, another dismayed righty:

As a conservative who’s interested in the long-term health of both my country and the Republican Party, I have a suggestion for the GOP in 2006: lose. Handing over at least one house of Congress to the other side of the aisle for the next two years would probably be good for everyone. It will improve governance in the country, and it will increase the chances of GOP gains in 2008.

US Emb-Damascus

Condi Rice: "I do think the Syrians reacted to the attack in a way that helped to secure our people, and we very much appreciate that." Oh no, lots of long faces among the creative destruction crowd today, one suspects. But hey, at least it's another opportunity for the tiresome group-thinkers and faux Churchills to chant on about Condi's appeasing ways...meantime, one wonders: would such pleasant Islamists, like those who tried to attack our Embassy, replace Bashar Asad if the 'on to Damascus' brigades got their wishes, or would we instead have a good old fashioned Sunni strong-man instead, one likely much more amenable than even confused Bashar to fortifying the rat-lines to Anbar? Oh, I almost forgot. Doubtless, one suspects, there's a Syrian Ahmad Chalabi that our Beltway clowns have in mind to save the day? Pray tell...

September 12, 2006

The View From My Window

Downtown Manhattan, 9/12/06, 12:25 A.M (Note: And with apologies for rather shamelessly ripping off the concept from Andrew Sullivan).

Recommended

A very impressive speech by David Cameron, the U.K.'s Conservative Party leader.

In that context, what should be the outline of British and American foreign policy in the post-neo-conservative world? Let me start by making clear where I agree with the neo-conservative approach. I fully appreciate the scale of the threat we face. I believe that the leadership of the United States, supported by Britain, is central to the struggle in which we are engaged. I believe that the neo-conservatives are right to argue that extending freedom is an essential objective of western foreign policy. And I agree that western powers should be prepared, in the last resort, to use military force. We know from history that a country must be ready to defend itself and its allies. More than that, we and others are justified in using pre-emptive force when an attack on us is being prepared, and when all means of peaceful dissuasion and deterrence have failed. Furthermore, I believe that we should be prepared to intervene for humanitarian purposes to rescue people from genocide.

But I believe that in the last five years we have suffered from the absence of two crucial qualities which should always condition foreign policy-making. Humility, and patience. These are not warlike words. They are not so glamorous and exciting as the easy sound-bites we have grown used to in recent years. But these sound-bites had the failing of all foreign policy designed to fit into a headline. They were unrealistic and simplistic. They represented a view w