Bush/Lieberman/Repubs misleading Americans about Iraq quagmire

[ProSense]

The Danger of Seeking Permanent U.S. Military Bases.

The United States is currently building a number of military facilities in Iraq, including 14 major installations sometimes referred to as “enduring bases” to be used by the Iraqi Army.164 Such construction is both necessary for the future effectiveness of the Iraqi military and not particularly surprising for a strategy that seeks to empower indigenous security forces since many of Iraq’s prewar bases and military infrastructure were in serious decline on the eve of U.S. intervention. Additionally, and more importantly, the widespread and often systematic looting that followed the ouster of Saddam Hussein caused massive and sometimes total destruction of those military facilities. In some cases, looters with cranes and trucks stole everything valuable at military sites.165 Rebuilding a totally shattered military infrastructure thus has become a necessity.

Some suggest that the U.S. Government may be tempted to seek its own large and significant military bases to remain in that country after the departure of the majority of U.S. forces.166 The disadvantages associated with such a policy clearly have been recognized by the U.S. administration, and Secretary Rumsfeld has characterized the suggestion that the United States is interested in such facilities as “inaccurate and unfortunate.”167 President Bush has also made the statement that “We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed, and not a day longer,” which some observers have interpreted as an indication that the administration is not seeking permanent bases.168

The question naturally arises as to how long the United States will stay to help fight the Iraqi insurgents without enjoying “permanent” basing rights. If the insurgency lasts for 12 years, as Secretary Rumsfeld suggests it might, does the United States keep some forces in Iraq throughout that time while maintaining that such deployments are not permanent? Perhaps because of these ambiguities, a great deal of suspicion exists in the Middle East and elsewhere that the United States will reverse itself at some key point and seek military facilities in Iraq beyond those needed to assist the Iraqi government with its struggle against the insurgents.169

Part of the suspicion of U.S. intentions is probably simply a general distrust of U.S. policy, but it may also reflect awareness by Middle Eastern publics of the calls by some neo-conservative commentators for U.S. basing rights in Iraq.170 Furthermore, the decision to relinquish U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia is sometimes seen as a factor driving the United States to seek Iraqi bases.171 There is some logic behind these worries. While the primary purpose of the Saudi bases was usually presented as deterring and containing Saddam Hussein, these facilities also entered into the strategic equation regarding Iran and other problematic Middle Eastern scenarios. Thus, the decision to leave the Saudi bases is sometimes viewed as a setback for U.S. strategic flexibility.

Within the Iraqi context, the primary justification for retaining U.S. bases would be to support the Iraqi governmental security forces after the majority of U.S. troops have withdrawn from that country. Moreover, it would signal a strong and continuing U.S. interest in the future of this country. Nevertheless, these reasons for staying in Iraq in most circumstances will be strongly outweighed by the disadvantages associated with such a policy if they involve U.S. military assets that remain after U.S. forces are no longer necessary to cope with the insurgency.

A basing agreement may also seriously hurt the legitimacy of the Iraqi government, which the United States must seek to support. Resistance to basing rights by Western powers traditionally has been a central characteristic of Arab nationalism, which cannot be casually disregarded by key Iraqi leaders.172 Even moderate Iraqi politicians fear that the United States may seek to dominate the post-Saddam Iraqi government.173 Bases could be seen as a central part of such a strategy. Additionally, anti-American radicals in both the Shi’ite and Sunni communities would be given the gift of a major issue with which to rally their followers. Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has a strong following among Iraq’s most impoverished Shi’ites, has made opposition to U.S. influence in Iraq a central demand for his movement.

Perhaps most significantly, large and important Arab countries are seldom the most optimal locations for Western military bases. The presence of such facilities is widely taken to imply a certain higher level of Western influence over the government in question. Such a relationship is not only embarrassing with the public, but it is also a serious obstacle to seeking regional and Arab leadership and regionwide respect, especially at a time when anti-Americanism is high. Smaller Arab states, by contrast, have no serious chance of claiming Arab leadership, and this factor is not a consideration for them. Additionally, small wealthy states, such as Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, clearly see U.S. bases as an important source of protection from bullying and perhaps even military invasion by larger regional neighbors.174 These states are much easier to work with in time of crisis, and their facilities can meet the same operational requirement as bases in Iraq. 175

Conclusion.

This monograph has sought to illustrate how challenging, multifaceted, and difficult it will be to devise an effective exit strategy for Iraq that can also serve as a victory strategy, leaving both the United States and Iraq better off than when the intervention was undertaken in 2003. While this goal is still attainable, remarkably little room exists for error, ideological dogmatism, or ignorance about the nature of the multiple problems associated with such an undertaking. Although the authors of this work understand that no one can generate a perfect plan for addressing the issue of an exit strategy, the following recommendations are offered in the hope that they will be of value to planners and policymakers grappling with this fundamental issue of U.S. strategic policy.

1. U.S. Government leaders must never forget that the United States will achieve its key objectives once the Iraqi government is viewed by the majority of its people, regardless of sect or ethnicity, as a legitimate government that is worth fighting and dying for; and the Iraqi security forces have the training, know-how, and equipment to put these convictions into practice. Empowering the government and security forces is the key to an endstate in Iraq acceptable to the United States. The U.S. decision to avoid lingering in that country to eradicate the insurgency is therefore compatible with these priorities. All U.S. actions must be considered in light of the burden that they might place on Iraqi governmental legitimacy since this is the key to a government victory.

2. The United States must develop detailed plans for implementing a withdrawal of significant numbers of troops under a variety of much less than optimal conditions. This requirement means that the Iraqi government may not yet have a strong human rights record, and the security forces may not be able to destroy the insurgency when the United States begins withdrawing troops. If the government is legitimate enough to survive, it may be useful to consider withdrawing the bulk of coalition forces as a way of empowering the new government by giving it the status of a fully independent entity. The United States may also have to scale back its expectations for Iraq’s political future. If the United States withdraws and a civil war does not take place, Iraq is better than we found it. Any regime that respects the need to share power among all major Iraqi groups (and one hopes minor groups) is a great deal better than the Saddam Hussein regime. Moreover, some Iraqi governmental violations of human rights may be inevitable, so long as the government is locked in a death struggle with insurgents who are perfectly willing to bomb mosques and murder large numbers of children such as occurred in July 2005. The United States should be prepared to criticize Iraqi human rights violations, but it also must be aware of the context, and the possibility that the criticism will be more effective and meaningful at a point when the Iraqi government is no longer fighting for its existence.

3. U.S. military and intelligence leaders must be painfully honest in addressing the question of when Iraqi security forces will be able to function without a coalition troop presence to prop them up. To answer this question incorrectly could cause the United States fail to meet its minimal objective of helping empower a functioning government in Iraq. One of the most serious threats to U.S. goals in Iraq is the danger of unrealistic optimism about the capabilities and élan of the Iraq security forces, and especially those units that have not actually been tested in combat. Such wishful thinking, if acted upon, could cause the Iraqi military to be given too much responsibility and then collapse in the face of enemy opposition which they are not yet prepared to address. The United States does not have the time or resources to build and then rebuild the Iraqi security force after a series of collapses. False or foolish optimism on the ability of forces may lead to a repea t of the November 2004 Mosul disaster on a nationwide scale.

4. Senior U.S. military leaders must resist the view that they are “grading themselves” when they are asked to train the security forces and to evaluate Iraqi readiness to assume more expanded duties for military and security operations. The viability of Iraqi units must be measured by a series of tough indicators, including real efforts to measure intangibles like morale and unit cohesion, as well as quantifying training and the distribution of weapons and equipment. Iraqi units that have not proven themselves in battle should remain suspect, units that have histories of heavy infiltration by insurgents and high rates of desertion should be even more suspect, units that have an internal culture where troops speak openly in favor of the insurgents or maintain publicly that they will desert to join an ethnic militia if their sectarian leaders ask them to should be especially suspect. While these military problems may not be easily corrected by U.S. trainers and advisors, neither should they be ignored when attempting to make an honest evaluation of Iraqi prospects for self-defense.

5. The United States MUST NOT establish a timetable to withdraw from Iraq so long as U.S. leaders consider the situation in Iraq to be redeemable. If a timetable is established and rigidly adhered to regardless of the situation on the ground, then the United States has, in effect, given up on Iraq, and is engaged in what amounts to choosing a withdrawal date by lottery. It has also replaced the judgement of the U.S. military and intelligence leadership with an arbitrary decision on when Iraqi forces will be ready to assume the security duties necessary for that nation to survive intact. A timetable is not a strategy for even the most limited of form of success in Iraq; it is an excuse for allowing the system to collapse.

6. As a last resort for preventing near-term civil war, the United States may have to swallow the bitter pill of allowing local militias to retain a significant and ongoing role in Iraqi politics if the Iraqi government is interested in pursuing this option and if the Iraqi security forces cannot take full responsibility for the nation’s safety. It is no longer clear that the United States will be able to create military and police forces that can secure the entire country no matter how long U.S. forces remain. It is also doubtful that Sunni Muslims will trust the Shi’ite-dominated central government and security forces to the point that that they will give up their militias without a fight. Militias are better than anarchy, although the danger they may serve as the building blocks for civil war should cause them to be used only as a last resort. It is worth reiterating that this is only one step better than anarchy and should only be considered as a final choice. Once power is decentralized, it will be deeply difficult to recentralize.

7. The United States needs to renounce interest in permanent bases in Iraq on a strong and continuing basis. Once a long-term basing agreement is formalized, it will become a festering grievance for Iraqi nationalists and will be criticized constantly by Iraqi and Arab World radicals. Since a primary U.S. goal is to empower the Iraqi government with legitimacy, such bases must be renounced as a way of reinforcing that legitimacy, which this monograph claims is a military necessity to achieve victory.

8. The United States needs to deemphasize rhetoric that may cause Iraqi citizens to believe their government has been put in place to wage war on U.S. enemies in the Muslim World and otherwise serve U.S. interests. If Iraq is the “central front” in the war on terrorism, then it is part of a campaign that mainstream Muslims view as including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s actions against the Palestinians and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s campaign against Chechnya. The United States does not need to burden the Iraqi government with the specter of collusion in what may be seen as anti-Muslim policies.

9. U.S. leadership must recognize that it may still continue to support democracy after U.S. forces are withdrawn from Iraq, providing that the nation is stable when it leaves. The United States is expected to continue providing the Iraqi government with strong diplomatic and material support for its efforts. Following a U.S. departure, it is conceivable that the Iraqi military will be defeated if they show a lack of fighting spirit, but it is inconceivable that the United States should be willing to allow them to be defeated by a lack of military equipment and weaponry. As noted, materiel support will not save a failed military, but it might save a faltering military of a struggling government.

10. U.S. leaders should continually note the courage, commitment, and sacrifice of our troops in the field, while realizing that these same qualities are reasons to safeguard their lives even more carefully. All future wars should have carefully planned exit strategies based on something other than best case planning for the future of the countries involved. In undertaking such plans, the United States must take care to maintain realistic expectations of what it can actually achieve with military intervention, especially with regard to the imposition of market economies and democracy on states that we do not fully understand. Goals for intervention might at times be maintained at a limited level and adjusted upwards if conditions permit rather than held to lofty high standards (such as total “de-Ba’athification”) which conditions may later force the United States to compromise to extricate itself from a position of indefinite occupation.

PRECEDENTS, VARIABLES, AND OPTIONS IN PLANNING A U.S. MILITARY DISENGAGEMENT STRATEGY FROM IRAQ

So they present a clear argument for not staying, not establishing bases, acknowledge the situation is denegrating to anarchy, but add this little caveat:

"The United States MUST NOT establish a timetable to withdraw from Iraq so long as U.S. leaders consider the situation in Iraq to be redeemable."

Interesting, but then again, this report was published in October and the information cut-off date was August 2005, making it a year old. There is almost no one now, except Bush, who believes Iraq is not in a civil war and getting worse by the day.

In fact, in December a new report was published (new excuse: the "original sin" defense):

Lessons.

The principal purpose of this monograph has been to cast doubt on the assumption that the United States squandered an historic opportunity to reconstruct the Iraqi state through mind-numbing incompetence. In reviewing the decisions of the Bush administration, to be sure, one can certainly question a good number of them. But if in detail the criticisms make considerable sense, the overall tenor of the argument is very misleading. The basic problems the United States has confronted flowed from the enterprise itself and not primarily from mistakes in execution along the way. “The war itself was the original sin,” as one senior diplomat from the region observed. “When you commit a sin as cardinal as that, you are bound to get a lot of things wrong.” He illustrated the point, aptly, as follows: “When you enter a one-way street in the wrong direction, no matter which way you turn, you will be entering all the other streets in the wrong way.”58

This conclusion should not be seen as absolving civilian and military war planners from responsibility for the choices that were made. It does argue, however, for a greater measure of realism regarding the constraints under which U.S. officials operated, and the sheer difficulty of the problems that were faced. Even if a larger invading force had had an operational plan sensitive to the likelihood that anarchy would follow rapidly from the decapitation of the Iraqi state, it still would have been extremely difficult to prevent most of the large-scale looting and rampant criminality that descended on the country. Even had American forces understood that they were likely to face a growing insurgency after the war, it is doubtful that they could have elaborated an effective strategy for defeating it quickly, if at all. Given the extreme pressures that have been placed on active and reserve forces in maintaining a force of 140,000 troops, retrospective judgments that more forces should have been sent at the beginning and throughout appear unrealistic, as do the oftheard calls for more international forces from countries that have been keenly looking for a good excuse not to send them to Iraq since the war began. A realistic appreciation of the manifold problems that would arise from the invasion of the country actually pointed to the conclusion that Iraq ought not to have been invaded and “liberated” at all. As Fallows observes, the most prescient warnings that emerged within the bureaucracy over the hazards entailed by the Iraq invasion did come from those who opposed the enterprise. In the nature of things, this made it very difficult for the architects of the invasion to take such warnings seriously.

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was, in basic respects, a test of the theory that civilians must intervene in the military planning process and force their perspectives down the chain of command.59 Secretary Rumsfeld did this in the first instance by starting the bidding for the forces committed to the invasion at 75,000 troops and intimating that a smaller number would be entirely adequate. Events have shown that the number was ludicrously small in relation to the tasks given to U.S. forces, and that Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was right in seeing the need for much larger numbers. On this crucial question, certainly, the record of Iraq war planning does nothing to advance the case for civilian activism. Even if the indictment of Secretary Rumsfeld is accepted, however, the case of the critics is not thereby confirmed. Taken at face value, that case amounts to the proposition that there was a smart and a dumb way of going about the demolition and reconstruction of the Iraqi state, and that the Bush administration, blinded by ideology, chose the latter course. A more appropriate lesson is that there are certain intrinsic limits to what military power can accomplish that both defenders and critics of the administration’s course of action have ignored. “Policy must know the instrument it is to employ,” says Clausewtiz in one of his enduring formulations. For certain purposes, like the creation of a liberal democratic society that will be a model for others, it seems fair to conclude that military power is a blunt instrument, destined by its very nature to give rise to unintended and unwelcome consequences.60

It is notable, indeed, that the argument over “what went wrong” has seldom, if at all, brought into question the tactics employed by U.S. forces, but there was, in fact, a deep contradiction between the democracy the United States said it was trying to build and the methods it employed to battle the insurgency. Democracy, as it is commonly understood, is about more than free and fair elections. It requires “independent courts, equality before the law, and constitutional limits on the powers of government. It establishes independent institutions to control and punish corruption and abuse of power.” No one in a democracy “may be arrested, imprisoned, or exiled arbitrarily. No one may be denied freedom without a fair and public hearing by an impartial court.”61 Such restraints, however, had no bearing on the conduct of U.S. military forces, whose actions were governed formally by the law of armed conflict rather than the protection of individual rights typical of constitutional democracies. The U.S. military relied on military intelligence, often defective, rather than judicial warrants to conduct raids and pursue suspects. It arrested and imprisoned many individuals without even a pretense of fair and public hearings by impartial courts and often left family members with no knowledge of the whereabouts of their kin or the charges brought against them. There were few constitutional restraints on U.S. actions, and none reachable by Iraqi authorities.

For all the effort that American officials put into enshrining various individual rights in the TAL, the United States was equally insistent that the restraints on governmental power that the TAL incorporated did not apply to the coalition forces that actually held the police and military power in the country. Even if the plea is accepted that such measures were permitted by the laws of war and justified on grounds of military necessity, the flouting of such requirements by U.S. forces could not but undercut the U.S. case for democracy. Such conduct communicated to Iraqis that, while limitations on the power of the state ought to be enshrined in the constitution, they might easily be brushed aside by the appeal to national security.62

However Iraq ends, the lessons drawn from the experience are likely to be very important for the American government. Probably the most likely lesson is that agencies and departments of the U.S. Government and military need to be recast to fight another such war successfully. Some suggest that the United States should beef up its “nation-building” expertise, perhaps creating a cabinet level department charged with “reconstruction and stabilization.” Others argue that the army, having gotten out of the counterinsurgency business after Vietnam, needs to devote far more emphasis to training its forces to conduct those missions. A different conclusion would be to devise a national security strategy in which there is no imperative to fight the kind of war that the United States has fought in Iraq.

Rather than “do it better next time,” the contrary lesson would be on the order of “don’t do it at all.” There is, to be sure, a basic virtue in what political scientist Samuel Huntington has called “strategic pluralism.” Since threats are unpredictable, it stands to reason that a wide variety of capabilities, including redundancies in various service arms, is a virtue in national security strategy. Undoubtedly, too, U.S. forces may be called upon again to participate in operations to reconstruct “failed states,” and U.S. forces need to think about how to do this intelligently. But consideration also needs to be given to the counterargument that developing a wide range of capabilities increases the likelihood that they will be used for unnecessary enterprises.

Another lesson would be to insist on more realism in war planning projections. We have seen that politically unrealistic assumptions regarding the potential contribution of allied forces entered strongly into the war planning process during the prelude to the Iraq war, with the diplomacy of war preparation badly out of sync with the assumptions of the military planners. Ironically, OSD’s decision to pare the size of the invasion force, though justly criticized, had the unforeseen benefit of leaving sufficient reserves in the system to deal with a protracted campaign. Had the United States invaded with the 400,000 forces initially foreseen at the beginning of the military planning process, U.S. forces would have been placed under severe strain, and it is not evident how the challenge would have been met. The severe pressures placed on Army Reserve and National Guard forces by the Iraq campaign—including the odious expedient of the “backdoor draft”—necessitate a rethinking of the entire system for the recruitment and retention of ground forces.63

Finally, the military services—including but not limited to the Army—must digest again the lesson that “war is an instrument of policy.” The use of force must be guided by the imperative that it is to serve a political aim. The profound neglect given to reestablishing order in the military’s prewar planning and the facile assumption that operations critical to the overall success of the campaign were “somebody else’s business” reflect a shallow view of warfare. The American war plan, far from being “the most brilliant in modern American military history,” was, in crucial respects, not directed at the main political object: ensuring a successful reconstruction. It did not look toward “the day after” in a way that recognized the most serious problems that would face the United States after the collapse of the Iraqi regime.

This was not simply a failure of “intelligence” but one of “strategic culture”—the tendency, that is, for war planners, both civilian and military, to be “obsessed with stupendous deeds of fire and movement” rather than the political functions that war must serve.64 That proclivity has many dimensions, from theories of “shock and awe” in the Air Force and OSD to the aversion to policing and peacekeeping functions in the Army. Though the aversion to occupation duties did not and could not survive the encounter with Iraqi realities, the duties were carried out in a fashion—with the imperatives of “force protection” overriding concern for Iraqi civilian casualties—that risked sacrificing the broader strategic mission of U.S. forces.65 Like other failures of the U.S. mission in Iraq, this, too, has an air of inevitability about it. But civilian and military leaders need to ask themselves whether such a bargain is good for the nation and consistent with the professional ethic that soldiers are obligated to obey.

Revisions in Need of Revising: What Went Wrong in the Iraq War

Recent DU post:

Bush puzzled as to how Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd

U.S. acknowledges bombs triggered blasts

General: Iraq "uncontrollable chaos," Rumsfeld should be replaced

War plan

Defense reports indicate Iraq violence worsening; Bush says no it isn't

Bush admin quietly admitting that the "freedom agenda" has failed

Iraqi Death Toll Rose Above 3,400 in July


Today in the news:

Kurds flee homes as Iran shells Iraq's northern frontier

Michael Howard in Qandil Mountain
Friday August 18, 2006
The Guardian

Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.

Scores of Kurds have fled their homes in the northern frontier region after four days of shelling by the Iranian army. Local officials said Turkey had also fired a number of shells into Iraqi territory.

Some displaced families have pitched tents in the valleys behind Qandil Mountain, which straddles Iraq's rugged borders with Turkey and Iran. They told the Guardian yesterday that at least six villages had been abandoned and one person had died following a sustained artillery barrage by Iranian forces that appeared designed to flush out guerrillas linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who have hideouts in Iraq.

Although fighting between Turkish security forces and PKK militants is nowhere near the scale of the 1980s and 90s - which accounted for the loss of more than 30,000 mostly Turkish Kurdish lives- at least 15 Turkish police officers have died in clashes. The PKK's sister party in Iran, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (Pejak), has stepped up activities against security targets in Kurdish regions. Yesterday, Kurdish media said eight Iranian troops were killed.

more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1852843,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1

One gets the feeling Bush admin is bouncing around the region in search of a lasting war!

[ProSense]

1. NYT: The Relentless Tragedy Called Iraq (6 Letters)

The Relentless Tragedy Called Iraq (6 Letters)

Published: August 18, 2006

To the Editor:

I can’t help but compare your headline with President Bush’s bizarre remarks on Wednesday: “There’s some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run. They’re not bad people when they say that, they’re decent people” (“President Joins in G.O.P. Attacks on Democrats About Terrorism,” news article, Aug. 17).

...Uninvited and unprovoked, we invaded and overthrew the government of Iraq, destroyed its infrastructure, removed any sense of normalcy to the Iraqi people and killed and injured (directly or indirectly) tens of thousands of their husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters.

If President Bush seems thwarted for the moment in his Iraq policy, perhaps it is because he is better at dismantling political systems than at establishing them.

His unbending refrain that we must “stay the course” in Iraq offers them only more bloodshed and destruction. For the sake of the Iraqi people, the United States must depart immediately.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/opinion/l18iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[ginnyinWI]

2. Here's a Kerry speech (audio) from last year.

He wraps it all up and ties it with a bow. Everything * has done wrong in Iraq. It's about 18 min. and was delivered on the floor of the Senate in November 2005. But it's still all as true now as it was then.

http://demradio.senate.gov/actualities/kerry/kerry051115_floor.mp3

[ProSense]

3. Excellent! Thanks! n/t

[kentuck]

4. K & R !

Worthy point to remember.

[ProSense]

5. Iraq continues to slide toward all-out civil war

Iraq continues to slide toward all-out civil war

Frustration in Washington. Digging in heels in Baghdad. There's little sign that Iraq's government of national unity is bringing together the country's sectarian and ethnic groups -- as hoped -- so that U.S. troops can leave anytime soon.

By nearly every yardstick, the situation in Iraq is getting worse:

Last month, about 3,500 Iraqis died violently -- the highest monthly civilian toll since the war began more than three years ago.

In all, 2,625 explosive devices either detonated or were discovered before they could explode in July -- nearly double the figure for January, U.S. officials said. About 70 percent of the 1,666 bombs that did explode targeted U.S.-led forces.

Snip...

Differences between two powerful Shiite factions are nearly as profound as those dividing Sunnis and Shiites. The factions are locked in a power struggle for leadership. One wants to move quickly to establish a Shiite self-ruled region in the south similar to what the Kurds enjoy in the north. The other, along with Sunnis, strongly opposes the plan, fearing it would break the country apart.

Many Iraqis fear it's only a matter of time before internal Shiite differences explode into open conflict.

Snip...

Key U.S. senators complain it's time to tell Iraqis that American troops won't stay indefinitely and to make political compromises to avoid all-out civil war.

more...

http://www.kare11.com/news/national/national_article.aspx?storyid=132465

[ProSense]

6. Bummed out by the Middle East? Turn that frown upside down!

Rosa Brooks: Get Happy the White House Way
Bummed out by the Middle East? Turn that frown upside down!

August 18, 2006

DID YOU KNOW that happy nuns live longer than unhappy nuns?

No? Don't feel bad. You probably didn't go to Harvard, where the most popular class last semester was Psych 1504, "Positive Psychology." That's "positive" as in "Don't be so negative." In Positive Psychology, students read up on happy nuns and tackle assignments such as: "Write a brief biographical sketch from the positive perspective…. Mention … some wonderful things that … are happening to you." The aim of the course is to teach students to be happier.

Snip...


But once I started to think more positively, I realized that 3½ years is really not bad. The Iraq war has been going on for less time than the Thirty Years War! And it's been much shorter than the Hundred Years War. This realization made me feel a lot happier.

I also felt downcast initially about an article claiming that Israel's offensive in Lebanon has increased Hezbollah's popularity in the Middle East. One Egyptian newspaper described a surge in the number of babies named after Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. In Alexandria alone, health officials reported 128 newborn Nasrallahs.

Depressing? Not if you think about it from a positive perspective. As Democracy Arsenal blogger Shadi Hamid points out, all those baby Nasrallahs just confirm Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's prediction that the conflict in Lebanon represents the "birth pangs of the new Middle East."

Once I got the hang of looking on the bright side, everything began to fall into place. When my husband, Peter, reminded me that it will soon be the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,740 Americans, he expected me to pull a long face. But I just gave him a patient smile. "2,740 dead Americans may seem like a big number to you," I explained, "but almost as many American soldiers — 2,604 — have now been killed in the Iraq war. And a number like this isn't a sign of some sort of problem — as White House spokesman Tony Snow put it when U.S. military deaths in Iraq reached the 2,500 mark, it's just 'a number'! It doesn't mean anything!"

I tried to explain. "Look, I bet you think there's some kind of problem with the war in Iraq. You probably think we need to get out — or maybe you think that if we don't get out, we need more troops. Wrong! You just need to think more positively. As Colin Powell once said, 'Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier!' " Peter snickered.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks18aug18,0,3732173.column?coll=la-opinion-columnists

[ProSense]

7. "Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everyone you meet."

Trying to build an army in a combat zone

By Michael R. Gordon The New York Times
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 2006

The rules posted on the wall of the U.S. Marine Corps base in Barwana concisely summed up its predicament in Iraq: Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

Barwana was a way station for a joint Iraqi-U.S. convoy as it traveled to a stretch of hard-packed sand in the Haditha triad, one of the more challenging areas in Anbar, the most dangerous province in Iraq.

Snip...

The rules at Barwana hinted at one rationale. For all the U.S. military's fighting skills, the Iraqi troops are better able to differentiate among the welter of tribes, self-styled militias, religious groupings, insurgent organizations and jihadists who make up part of Iraq.

But there are other important rationales as well. With U.S. forces stretched perilously thin, fielding an Iraqi military - along with a parallel effort to build up the Iraqi police - is the closest thing the Bush administration has to an exit strategy.

Snip...

U.S. commanders consider Falluja a success story. After the U.S. Marine Corps cleared the city in a violent battle in 2004, seven checkpoints were established to control access, making Falluja Iraq's largest gated community.

For all that, militants have managed to slip back in. The night I arrived, a roadside bomb killed one Iraqi soldier and wounded another during a shift change at an observation post.

more...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/18/news/iraqarmy.php

[ProSense]

8. Rep. Shays (R-CT) for withdrawal timetable

Reflecting these pressures, Republicans in swing districts are beginning to waver. In an interview from Israel yesterday, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) said the political will of the United States is being stretched to the limit. He promised to offer a time frame for troop withdrawals when he returns next week from his 14th trip to Iraq.

"We have got to find a way to come to some kind of consensus, so we can do what's right for our country and what's right for the Iraqis," said Shays, an ardent supporter of the war who is in a political dogfight with his antiwar Democratic opponent. "We have to say 'This is the latest we will leave' and be able to live with that."

Shays plans to hold three hearings next month to explore whether Iraq is heading toward democracy or civil war, a state parts of the country are already in, he said. "I am more pessimistic, clearly," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/18/AR2006081800109_2.html

[ProSense]

9. The neocons advocating a withdrawal plan.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1944017&mesg_id=1944017