Bush Should Start By Admitting Fault
By Madeleine K. Albright
The threshold question in any war is: What are we fighting for? Our troops, especially, deserve a convincing answer.
| If you were to ask them, Maddy, they might just tell you that they know exactly what they're fighting for. |
In Iraq, the list of missions that were tried on but didn't fit includes: protection from weapons of mass destruction, creating a model democracy in the Arab world, punishing those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and stopping terrorists from catching the next plane to New York.
Protection from WMD: check. It worked. No one from Iraq has hit us with WMD.
Punishing those responsible for 9/11: check. AQI is part of AQ, which is responsible for 9/11. We've been killing them which (to us anyways) is a punishment.
Stopping terrorists: check. All the dead ones are stopped cold.
Model democracy: check. Three elections, a constitution, a parliament, a prime minister, and functioning courts. Not perfect, but who is. Work in progress. |
The latest mission, linked to the "surge" of troops this year, was to give Iraqi leaders the security and maneuvering room needed to make stabilizing political arrangements -- which they have thus far shown little interest in doing.
| One could argue that they're made more progress in working together than Dhimmicrats and Republicans in Congress. |
A cynic might suggest that the military's real mission is to enable President Bush to continue denying that his invasion has evolved into disaster.
| Guess that makes all the nutroots cynics. |
A less jaded view might identify three goals: to prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for al-Qaeda, a client state of Iran or a spark that inflames regionwide war.
| Is that a bad idea? We sure don't want the Iranians in Iraq, we don't want Iraq to be a safe haven for AQ (that's why we invaded Afghanistan, remember) and we didn't want to leave Iraq in the hands of a genocidal thug who had big plans (Sammy). Are any of those goals a bad idea? |
These goals respond not to dangers that prompted the invasion but to those that resulted from it.
| Wrong. Iran has had designs on the Shi'a population of Iraq for a long time. Sammy was consorting with AQ at several levels. And removing Sammy was always in our best interest. |
Our troops are being asked to risk their lives to solve problems our civilian leaders created. The president is beseeching us to fear failure, but he has yet to explain how our military can succeed given Iraq's tangled politics and his administration's lack of credibility.
| Actually the military is showing us. The Sunnis are working with us -- not because we can't protect them, as alleged by the odious Chuckie Schumer, but precisely because we are the ones that do protect them -- from AQI and from the Shi'a. The military is getting Iraqis at the local level to cooperate, and building any sort of democratic state has to begin there. The mistake has been to try and cobble together a government in Baghdad and think that it would hold. That has been the goal of the 'realists' and it hasn't worked. |
This disconnect between mission and capabilities should be at the center of debate as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker report on the war's status and congressional leaders prepare their fall strategies.
| And when the good general and good ambassador tell you that they're making progress and that they disagree with you, Maddy, will you reconsider? |
Despite the hopes of many, this debate is unlikely to end the war soon; nor will it produce fresh support for our present dismal course.
| As long as the nutroots advocate withdrawal and defeat that will be true. |
Although U.S. troop levels will surely start to come down, big decisions about whether and under what circumstances to complete the withdrawal seem certain to remain for the next president, when he or she takes office.
| And perhaps for the president after the next one, and the one after that. This is a generational fight. We all recognized that with the Cold War, and we need to realize that it's also true in the War on Islamicist Terror. We'll be fighting this war in one way or another for the next forty years. |
Yet this should not preclude Democrats and Republicans from trying to agree on ways to minimize the damage before then.
| That's just code speak for withdrawal. |
According to the National Intelligence Estimate released last month, the recent modest but extremely hard-won military gains will mean little "unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors driving Iraqi political and security developments."
| Maddy has to bang the political drum. The goal posts were moved and that's the drum she has right now. If the Iraqis start to make political progress -- and staying there is the best bet to get them to accommodate each other -- she'll move on to something else. |
Given the depth of the sectarian divisions within Iraq, such a fundamental shift will not occur through Iraqi actions alone. Given America's lack of leverage, it will not result from our patrols, benchmarks, speeches or "surprise" presidential visits to Anbar province. That leaves coordinated international assistance as the only option.
| Oh dear, the committed internationalist speaks. She's going to cite the Balkans. She might wish to remember just how it was that 'international assistance' was able to work. It came on the tip of F-117s, A-10s and F-15s. It came because American military commanders, unlike their Y'urp-peon counterparts, made clear that the people of the Balkans would stop the killing, or the Americans would do so. Maddy was around for that but doesn't remember the history. |
The Balkans are at peace today through the joint efforts of the United States, the European Union and the United Nations -- all of which worked to help moderate leaders inside the region.
| Because we Americans made clear that we'd start killing the radical ones, and we bombed the shit out of a few of them to make our point. |
A similar strategy should have been part of our Iraq policy from the outset but has never been seriously attempted.
It wasn't possible -- the U.N. was against what we were doing, as were most of the Euros. The U.N. bailed out of post-war Iraq when their HQ was bombed.
Seen any French or German or Belgian assistance missions in Iraq? See any Russian or Brazilian humanitarian missions there? No? Wonder why? Because, Maddy, they were against this all along, and the only way for us to have any agreement with them was to cancel the invasion. That was unacceptable. It's disingenuous today, at best, to say that we made it impossible for an 'international agreement'. I'd say it's intellectually dishonest. |
Is such an initiative still viable? Perhaps. The United Nations has pledged to become more involved.
| Now that we've done the heavy lifting, the U.N. would like to take credit. |
Europe's new leaders -- led by Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown -- understand their region's stake in Iraq's future and seem willing to assist.
| Funny how Chirac and Schroeder didn't see that. Wonder why? |
The Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian governments all view Iraqi instability as a profound security threat.
| Saddam was a genocidal thug, but he was a Sunni thug that they understood very well. He was just like most of them. Now the Shi'a are in charge, so of course that's a threat to these Sunni regimes. |
Turkish and Kurdish representatives recently signed an agreement to cooperate along their troubled border. Iran is the wildest of cards, but it would be unlikely to isolate itself from a broad international program aimed at reconciliation.
| Which is why they're doing so right now and have been for years. They have sanctions against them. The banking system is increasingly unavailable to them. Most of their neighbors despise and mistrust them. 'unlikely to isolate itself'? Does Maddy even read the papers? |
If it does, it would only hand a political victory to us and to the many Iraqi leaders, Shiite and Sunni alike, who would prefer to minimize Iranian influence.
| Only if we confront the Iranians, rather than acquiescing to them. Confrontation doesn't mean a bombing campaign, but it does mean that the West has to stop its mealy-mouthed seeking of accommodation. Ronald Reagan got it right when he called the Soviet Union an 'evil empire' -- it clarified the issue at hand. George Bush was right to include Iran in the 'axis of evil' -- follow the logic and again, it makes clear what needs to be made clear. That's where we go: the Mad Mullahs™ are evil, and we will stand up to them. That's how you put an end to evil. |
President Bush could do his part by admitting what the world knows -- that many prewar criticisms of the invasion were on target.
Oh, let's see about that 'many', shall we?
The Left said that our invasion would founder because the Iraqi army, particularly the Republican Guards, would stop our troops.
The Left said that Baghdad would be Stalingrad. Or Dresden.
The Left said that we'd have 30,000 casualties just from the invasion. There would be a million Iraqi casualties, including civilians, and several million would be displaced.
The Left said that post-war Iraq would be overrun with cholera and typhus.
The Left said that not only did Saddam have WMD, he would use them on our troops.
Are those amongst the 'many' criticisms, Maddy? I can cite more. |
Such an admission would be just the shock a serious diplomatic project would need.
| Sure would. It would depress everyone who's trying to make things work in Iraq. It would embolden Iran and Syria. It would encourage AQ. It would be the best recruiting tool for terrorism in years. |
It would make it easier for European and Arab leaders to help, as their constituents are reluctant to bail out a president who still insists that he was right and they were wrong.
| He was right. They were wrong. And frankly, we really don't need the U.N. and the Euros at this point. |
Our troops face death every day; the least the president can do is face the truth.
A coordinated international effort could help Iraq by patrolling borders, aiding reconstruction, further training its army and police, and strengthening legislative and judicial institutions.
We're already doing that. How exactly are the Belgians going to 'strengthen legislative institutions'? The Phlegms and Loonies can't even govern their own country. Does anyone think that the French will put troops on the Iraq-Syria border? Does anyone think the Euros would do one reasonable thing that would require any substantial commitment of men, material and money? Nah, me neither.
What Maddie, the Left and the Euros want is to be the Boss: they want to tell the rest of us what to think and how to behave. They want us to dig deep into our wallets to support their notions of how the world should be. And they want us to be grateful that they're here to guide us. |
It could also send a unified message to Iraq's sectarian leaders that a political power-sharing arrangement that recognizes majority rule and protects minority rights is the only solution and is also attainable.
| A unified message is something the Euros could do today. They could admit that the U.S. had a point, that Iraq is indeed important, that it's good that Sammy is cavorting with Himmler in Hell, and that Syria and Iran had better keep their hands where we can see them. That kind of talk would be useful, and it wouldn't cost the Euros a thing. |
If there is a chance to avoid deeper disaster in Iraq, it depends on a psychological transformation so people begin preparing to compete for power peacefully instead of plotting how to survive amid anarchy.
| Plotting to survive is what you do when you think the single big power in the region is going to bail out. |
The international community cannot ensure such a shift, but we can and should do more to encourage it.
Pavarotti dies and we get this?
| Could be worse. We could have gotten Jimmuah Carter. |
|