“What we’ve seen in the past two days, the attack has had a major impact here, getting everyone’s attention that Iraq is in danger,” Mr. Khalilzad said in a conference call with reporters.
The country’s leaders, he added, “must come together, they must compromise with each other to bring the people of Iraq together and save this country.”
Mr. Khalilzad’s comments are the most explicit acknowledgment so far by an American official of the instability of the situation, and the fragility of the entire American enterprise here. The killings and assaults across Iraq that began Wednesday have amounted to the worst sectarian violence since the American invasion.
…In the deadliest assault, 47 people returning from a protest were pulled off buses south of Baghdad on Wednesday and shot in the head, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday. Three journalists from Al Arabiya, the Arab satellite network, were abducted and killed Wednesday in Samarra, near the ruined shrine. Seven American soldiers were also killed Wednesday in unrelated attacks involving roadside bombs.
Political and religious leaders, including President Jalal Talabani and Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose followers are believed to be involved in much of the anti-Sunni violence, called for restraint.
Bring it on, indeed. A terrible situation, and a confused one, in which al-Sadr, of all people, feels compelled to urge restraint.
For the purpose of discussion, if Khalizad is this blunt, we should probably assume that reality is far, far worse. Iraq is gone, or at the very least, rapidly moving that way.
Now what? Three states, Shia, Sunni, and Kurd? A violent, anarchic “state of nature”? How will humanitarian aid reach the sufferers if there is no Iraq left? What are the short term/long term implications for terrorism both within the Middle East and against the US and US citizens? What can be done, in any event, to counter the development of a disintegrated Iraq becoming a breeding ground for terrorism. Are efforts to “save” Iraq a priori doomed to failure?
And aside from the questions of humanitarian aid, the most crucial question: in a post-Bush world, what is the United States’ – our – moral obligation to the people of the former Iraq?
Thomas Friedman once said that it’s not every day you get to see a political experiment in action. Well Tom, here it is. Happy?
Extra! Extra! Neoconservatism Discovered To Be Screaming Yellow Bonkers!
by tristero
Why are the so-called “conservative intellectuals” in the United States so hellbent on reinventing a square wheel? Anyone with half a brain and half an education knows better than to bother. But there they are, with their T-squares marking off 89 degree angles – can’t even get that straight – and sawing away for years on one patently idiotic idea or another before finally announcing what liberals have known all along: It was a patently idiotic idea.
For the latest, here’s Francis Fukuyama’s epiphany. Turns out neoconservatism is… a really bad idea. Who knew? Well I knew, and I didn’t need tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq to know it. And so I think a prayer is called for:
Dear God,
Please deliver us from the hideous locust plague of conservative pseudo-intellectuals. Sinners we may be in Thine eyes, and unworthy of thy Divine Love, but Jesus Kee-rist! Cut us some friggin’ slack, already! Fire and brimstone, eternal damnation, I ain’t gonna argue with you. But, seriously, God, we really don’t deserve any more Fukuyamas, y’know? So ease up.
If members of Congress really want to burnish their “tough on terrorism” credentials, they should start by focusing on real presidential lapses, which are sufficient, and forget about the phony ones. As Mr. England said yesterday, the war on terrorism demands that the United States “strengthen the bonds of friendship and security . . . especially with our friends and allies in the Arab world.” That means allies should be treated “equally and fairly around the world and without discrimination,” he said. And he suggested that it is the terrorists who want the United States to “become distrustful, they want us to become paranoid and isolationist.”
If so, they must be feeling pretty content right now.
Yes, that’s right. If we become distrustful of our allies, the terrorists will have won:
Wednesday, January 25, 2006; Page A18
SHORTLY AFTER Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush famously declared that other countries must choose between supporting the United States and supporting terrorism, and that those that harbored al Qaeda would be treated as the enemy. In the years since, he has refrained from applying that tough principle in practice — which is lucky for Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Ever since the war on terrorism began, this meretricious military ruler has tried to be counted as a U.S. ally while avoiding an all-out campaign against the Islamic extremists in his country, who almost surely include Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. Despite mounting costs in American lives and resources, he has gotten away with it.
Glenn has been writing a lot about the administration pursuing journalists in the NSA illegal spying scandal and he sounds a very important alarm. But I think they should think long and hard about how far to take that considering their history. It’s a can of worms they will regret opening. Here’s a good example of what kind of ugly little fish-bait might come slithering out.
The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made exactly that charge tonight in a letter to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. What prompted Rockefeller to write Negroponte was a recent op-ed in the New York Times by CIA director Porter Goss complaining that leaks of classified information were the fault of “misguided whistleblowers.”
Rockefeller charged in his letter that the most “damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of intelligence agencies.”
Later in the same letter, Rockefeller said: “Given the Administration’s continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes, its criticism of leaks is extraordinarily hypocritical. Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest level of the Administration cease to disclose classified information on a selective basis for political purposes.”
Exhibit A for Rockefeller: Woodward’s book “Bush at War”.
Read the whole thing. I was unaware that the CIA had been instructed to cooperate with Woodward. I thought he was simply allowed to listen in on classified White House meetings:
One former senior administration official explained to me: “This was something that the White House wanted done because they considered it good public relations. If there was real damage to national security—if there were leaks that possibly exposed sources and methods, it was not done in this instance for the public good or to expose Watergate type wrongdoing. This was done for presidential image-making and a commercial enterprise—Woodward’s book.”
The Bush adminstration suffers from terminal hubris, so I am not sure they completely understand the implications of this. They seem to think they can get away with “leaking” classified information for political purposes with impunity while screaming to high heaven about real whistelblowers leaking classified information to expose wrongdoing by them. There was a time they could do that sort of thing and get away with it. I suspect that time is past. There is too much blood in the water.
This does explain why Woodward was so nervous about the Plame matter, though. He was leaked a ton of selective classified information by powerful people to help make a bogus case for war. He makes Novak look like an amateur.
This guy is so uncool Republicans will assume he’s one of them and vote for him by mistake. Blagojevich for president!
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich wasn’t in on the joke.
Blagojevich says he didn’t realize “The Daily Show” was a comedy spoof of the news when he sat down for an interview that ended up poking fun at the sometimes-puzzled governor.
“It was going to be an interview on contraceptives … that’s all I knew about it,” Blagojevich laughingly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a story for Thursday’s editions. “I had no idea I was going to be asked if I was ‘the gay governor.’ “
The interview focused on his executive order requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control.
Interviewer Jason Jones pretended to stumble over Blagojevich’s name before calling him “Governor Smith.” He urged Blagojevich to explain the contraception issue by playing the role of “a hot 17-year-old” and later asked if he was “the gay governor.”
At one point in the interview, a startled Blagojevich looked to someone off camera and said, “Is he teasing me or is that legit?”
David Brooks, the high-minded conservative pundit, dismissed the Dubai Ports controversy as an instance of political hysteria that will soon pass. He was commenting on PBS, and I thought I heard a little quaver in his voice when he said this was no big deal. Brooks consulted “the experts,” and they assured him there’s no national security risk in a foreign company owned by Middle East Muslims–actually, by an Arab government–managing six major American ports. Cool down, people. This is how the world works in the age of globalization.
Of course, he is correct. But what a killjoy. This is a fun flap, the kind that brings us together. Republicans and Democrats are frothing in unison, instead of polarizing incivilities. Together, they are all thumping righteously on the poor President. I expect he will fold or at least retreat tactically by ordering further investigation. The issue is indeed trivial. But Bush cannot escape the basic contradiction, because this dilemma is fundamental to his presidency.
A conservative blaming hysteria is hysterical, when you think about it, and a bit late. Hysteria launched Bush’s invasion of Iraq. It created that monstrosity called Homeland Security and pumped up defense spending by more than 40 percent. Hysteria has been used to realign US foreign policy for permanent imperial war-making, whenever and wherever we find something frightening afoot in the world. Hysteria will justify the “long war” now fondly embraced by Field Marshal Rumsfeld. It has also slaughtered a number of Democrats who were not sufficiently hysterical. It saved George Bush’s butt in 2004.
Bush was the principal author, along with his straight-shooting Vice President, and now he is hoisted by his own fear-mongering propaganda. The basic hysteria was invented from risks of terrorism, enlarged ridiculously by the President’s open-ended claim that we are endangered everywhere and anywhere (he decides where). Anyone who resists that proposition is a coward or, worse, a subversive. We are enticed to believe we are fighting a new cold war. But are we? People are entitled to ask. Bush picked at their emotional wounds after 9/11 and encouraged them to imagine endless versions of even-larger danger. What if someone shipped a nuke into New York Harbor? Or poured anthrax in the drinking water? OK, a lot of Americans got scared, even people who ought to know better.
So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business?
Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it.
Bush’s terrorism war has from the start been in collision with the precepts of corporate-led globalization. One practices hyper-nationalism–Washington gets to decide where it goes to war, never mind the Geneva Convention and other “obsolete” international restraints. Yet Bush’s diplomats travel the world banging on governments for trade rules that defenestrate a nation’s sovereign power to run its own affairs. The US government regards itself as comfortable with this arrangement since it assumes the superpower can always get its way. Most citizens are never consulted. They are perhaps unaware that their rights have been given away, too.
It would be nice to imagine this ridiculous episode will prompt reconsideration, cool down exploitative jingoism and provoke a more rational discussion of the multiplying absurdities. I doubt it. At least it will be satisfying to see Bush toasted irrationally, since he lit the match.
Indeed.
A commentator on CNN just said that if the US becomes isolationist and refuses to engage our neighbors the terrorists will have won. (I’m looking forward to hearing John Bolton sing “Blowing in The Wind” at the next meeting of the UN security council.)
“If the furor over the port deal should go on, Mr. England said, it would give enemies of the United States aid and comfort: ‘They want us to become distrustful, they want us to become paranoid and isolationist.'”
Republican voters, if you question the port deal, the administration thinks you’re a traitor.
Update:John Aravosis doesn’t think much of Gordon England.
Update II: For unknown reasons the NY Times has scrubbed the England quote from its story. It’s still in this story in the SF Chronicle.
Rush has been on a strange tangent the last couple of days. Aside from his strange sensitivity to the feelings of terrorist supporting middle eastern potentates (which actually makes sense when you stop and think about it) he also appears to be somewhat obsessive on other subjects:
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m tempted to say that we are on “Summers’s eve.” We are at Summers’s eve. I know Summer’s Eve is also — I think; I used to be an expert in these things — a feminine deodorant spray, but it’s also — it also designates, ladies and gentlemen, that we are in the last days of the administration of Larry Summers as president of Harvard. And, by the way, this happened — I think we need to change the name from Harvard to Hervard, because a bunch of angry feminazis took him out simply because he spoke the truth about diversity on campus and the differences in men and women.
The feminist movement is still alive and well, and it contains the central belief there’s really no difference between men and women, we’re all the same, we’re all just conditioned differently, but we can all do what everybody else does, we’re all equal, there is no inherent difference. Now, you think I’m laughing when I — joking when I suggest they change the name from Harvard to Hervard; they changed the word “history” to “herstory” at one point, remember, in the militant feminist movement. In fact, maybe we can have two schools, Hisvard and Hervard, and just sequester the students. Hervard: Übersexuals need not apply, metrosexuals would be welcome, but the few slots are very competitive. Transsexuals, your scholarship’s in the mail before you even apply.
And this, from the same day, is just strange:
OK, so there’s that. Lemme put that aside. Next little story, and this — this actually is from Sunday. It’s an Associated Press story: “Ginsburg bears burden without O’Connor. It’ll be a one-woman show in the Supreme Court starting Tuesday. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only female among the nine justices, and she’s not so happy about it.” So, resign. If you don’t like it, resign. If you don’t like being the only woman on the court, then go somewhere else. Besides, David Souter’s a girl. Everybody knows that. What’s the big deal? I’m talking about attitudinally, here, folks. You gotta — you just — Dawn [studio transcriber] agrees. She’s nodding her head in agreement.
Speaking of Jimmy Carter, did you see what his son, Jack, said? …”I am pro-choice as far as a woman choosing. But I am against abortion.” Well, there is a totally worthless view. This is just his version of, “I support the troops, but I don’t support the war.” Or “I’m against slavery, but I oppose freeing the slaves. I’m for jobs, but I’m not for Wal-Mart. I’m for open government, except when a Democrat’s in office, and I want to have the power to do what I want to do without anybody seeing me.”
I mean these people are just — they are so — just total wimps. Come on, Jack, tell us what you really believe, and stand for something, and come out and lead on that basis, Jack. This is — “No, I wanna make sure I don’t offend the women.” This — this is — here you go. Classic example of the castrati, the new castrati. Jack Carter is — has been castrated by the feminization of this culture since he grew up. He’s — he’s three years older than I am. He was subject to the same pressures I was, plus probably even more, what with his dad being in there in the White House and so forth.
You heard, of course, that he and Daryn Kagan broke up recently. (I know, I know)
It sounds like Rush has even more issues with women than he did before. It also sounds like he’s heavily trolling his favorite porn sites. He’s got transexuals and castrati on the brain again.
CNN just reported that Condoleeza Rice called for Syria to cooperate in the investigation of the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister. She really ought to keep that issue quiet for the moment.
The Bush administration is letting the United Arab Emirates take control of six key U.S. ports despite its own port’s reputation as a smuggling center used by arms traffickers, drug dealers and terrorists, apparently including the assassins of Lebanon’s ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Press accounts have noted that the UAE’s port of Dubai served as the main transshipment point for Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Q. Khan’s illicit transfers of materiel for building atomic bombs as well as the location of the money-laundering operations used by the Sept. 11 hijackers, two of whom came from the UAE.
But the year-old mystery of the truck-bomb assassination of Hariri also has wound its way through the UAE’s port facilities. United Nations investigators tracked the assassins’ white Mitsubishi Canter Van from Japan, where it had been stolen, to the UAE, according to a Dec. 10, 2005, U.N. report.
At that time, UAE officials had been unable to track what happened to the van after its arrival in Dubai. Presumably the van was loaded onto another freighter and shipped by sea through the Suez Canal to Lebanon, but the trail had gone cold in the UAE.
While not spelling out the precise status of the investigation in the UAE, the Dec. 10 report said U.N. investigators had sought help from “UAE authorities to trace the movements of this vehicle, including reviewing shipping documents from the UAE and, with the assistance of the UAE authorities, attempting to locate and interview the consignees of the container in which the vehicle or its parts is believed to have been shipped.”
The UAE’s competence – or lack of it – in identifying the “consignees” or the freighter used to transport the van to Lebanon could be the key to solving the Hariri murder. This tracking ability also might demonstrate whether UAE port supervisors have the requisite skills for protecting U.S. ports from terrorist penetration.
The Bush administration anticipated this and made sure this was addressed in the secret agreement:
Under the deal, the government asked Dubai Ports to operate American seaports with existing U.S. managers “to the extent possible.” It promised to take “all reasonable steps” to assist the Homeland Security Department, and it pledged to continue participating in security programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.
That “reviewing shipping documents” thing might be a little problem though. There is this:
The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.
Let’s just hope that DHS doesn’t need to look at any “business records” in order to trace terrorist activity in the US. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.
Is there now a civil war in Iraq, as the lunatic right is so eager to have its opponents claim? And would calling the horrors going on now within Iraq a “civil war” help or even further obscure any understanding of what’s going on?
Depends on the meaning of civil war which, I gather, is not at all a set definition among legitimate scholars. This, of course, lets the wingnuts play their grotestque sophistical games – Who sez it’s civil war? Only by liberals’ definition! – games made more perverse as the blood flows ever more freely. But there’s something more important at stake than arguing over when a civil war is “officially” a civil war or just “significant civic untidiness.” And that is trying to get some sort of conceptual handle with which to comprehend what is indisputably a violent, chaotic catastrophe.
How do I see the events of the last few days, the mosque bombing and the subsequent violence? I see them as making the issue of a disintegrative civil war in Iraq – and the scope of its tragic potential – an issue that is long overdue for serious focus. And make no mistake: The United States will be blamed for it. Not only Bush, but you and me. Although many of us fought as hard as we could to prevent Bush from doing anything as stupid as invading and conquering Iraq, we – and our kids- will be blamed; we will have to endure the consequences of the incompetence and stupidity of the Bush administration.
As a preliminary to a serious discussion, here are some remarks from September 16, 2005 from the Council on Foreign Relations. There is much more to be said, of course. And there are things I disagree with here. But they are interesting and thougthful comments:
Lionel Beehner,staff writer for cfr.org, asked several experts their opinions of what constitutes a civil war, and whether the situation in Iraq qualifies or not. …
[Michael O’Hanlon] “The kind of civil war I’m worried about is of the ethnic-cleansing kind, where people form militias and clear out neighborhoods…If you saw the militia-style combats—clearing out neighborhoods, people fighting each other and getting killed in pitched gun battles versus car bombs, or leaders calling for more organized conflict—then that would constitute a civil war.” …
[Kenneth Katzman] “Civil war is organized violence designed to change the political structure or governance within a country, or internal conflict within a state…
This week [September 16, 2005] it’s definitely become clearer that we’ve entered civil war, but whether it’s a sustained or permanent feature, we don’t know. Also, I wouldn’t say it’s full-blown, that is, where it’s neighborhood against neighborhood…just because you don’t have one side fighting back doesn’t mean you’re not in a civil war. “
…
[Marina Ottaway] “To go from acts of terrorism to civil war you need two population groups deliberately targeting each other. As long as it is insurgents trying to kill people to dissemminate terror, and the population is angry at the terrorists, that does not constitute civil war. In the case of Iraq, we would talk of civil war if the insurgents, who are overwhelmingly Sunni, started to deliberately target Shiites (or Kurds) and the targeted group reacted by holding every Sunni responsible, and thus would seek revenge against all Sunnis. I’m very hesitant to say you have a civil war in Iraq now. [Again, as of September 16, 2005].
I think Iraq is sliding very closely in that direction. It’s not quite there yet, but there is no longer a viable political process underway to halt the slide into civil war.” …
[David Phillips] “It’s already civil war. Civil war is sectarian-based conflict that’s systematic and coordinated. This has been going on for some time [in Iraq]…Next, what happens is the political process breaks down and sectarian strife worsens, Iraqi Kurds withdraw their cooperation from the government, ethnic conflict ensues, and Iraq starts to fragment. This will force the United States to manage the deconstruction of Iraq, meaning the country is not viable, and the United States can’t have 140,000 troops in the middle of a civil war. We’ll have to withdraw troops to the north, draw a line in the thirty-sixth parallel [which formerly demarcated the largely Kurdish no-fly zone from the rest of Iraq], and secure U.S. national interests, in the form of Kirkuk’s oil fields and protecting democracy in northern Iraq.” …
[Thomas X. Hammes]: “I think you know it when you see it, but we’re not there yet. In a true civil war, the mass of society on both sides is involved. Civil war would require family-on-family violence. That’s not the case yet…Obviously, all sides are preparing for the possibility [of civil war], but I think as long as [Shiites and Sunnis] are talking and trying to work through the constitution, we’re OK. “
…
[Steven Metz] “It’s really a whole spectrum because when we hear the phrase “civil war,” we think of the equivilance of total war. But I think there are lots of things at lower levels that constitute civil war. In terms of its definition, it’s obviously just war primarily internal to a country, even though it could have some external involvement. I’ve said all along the chances are perhaps fifty-fifty that the ultimate outcome [in Iraq] will be some sort of major civil war. I haven’t seen anything politically or militarily that would lead me to change that position.
The bottom line is Iraqis don’t have a strong sense of national identity but rather a sense of tribal and local identities. Countries like that are only able to avoid internal conflict if they have a powerful, central government, like Iraq had under Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, a democracy is not the type of government equipped to hold together such a fractured society.”
…there’s just nothing more precious than seeing the faux-populist poseur Post editorial writers standing tough against an entrenched “establishment” of thirty-something, tenure-desperate semioticians and lit geeks in defense of “mainstream American values”, a well of mores and beliefs with which the Post is no doubt deeply in touch. (Peel away the Fred Hiatt mask and underneath it’s Bruce Springsteen; cut a little deeper and he’s an Iowa farmer.)
…I didn’t speak to anybody from the White House or the vice president’s office all week on this. It was looking at it from outside the Beltway and saying where did this story stand on the relative scale of importance?
Gigot, too, evidently believes he has his finger on the heartland pulse.
This is why we are having such a disconnect with the mainstream press. They are laboring under some ridiculous belief that they are the voice of the people when they are actually the voice of the establishment — which is, by the way, Republican.
Democrats have a very bad habit of paying too much attention to the beltway punditocrisy. Online media isn’t going to change the world as we know it, but it might just be able to break up this abusive relationship and get them looking outside the beltway more. The establishment does not favor Democrats but thars gold in them thar hills if they care to look.