Surging the wrong direction

Somehow, the Republicans managed to paint the Democrats as wanting to surrender the "War on Terror" because we see the folly of continued involvement of American forces in Iraq.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and it is time to set the record straight.

The war in Iraq and the War on Terror are far from the same thing. In fact, I would argue that their respective circles barely overlap. Iraq is a sectarian civil war and American forces are caught in the crossfire. The front in the War on Terror is located on the other side of Iran, in Afghanistan.

They keep asking for a Democratic plan. Fine. This Democrat has one. The first thing we do is get our diplomats together with Iranian diplomats and we agree to stop meddling around on their borders if they will stop meddling in Iraq. (And make Juan Cole one of the Diplomats we send.) Acknowledge that the location of American combat forces on two of her borders has something to do with Iran's sudden interest in developing nuclear weapons. Especially when it is established fact that a lot of American commando activity has been going on in Iran below the CNN line. I understand their motivation because I can read a map.

The next thing we do is start pulling brigades back to Kuwait and let them rest up and have some leave. Reduce forces in Iraq by 10,000 a month, and when they are rested, add them to the NATO effort in Afghanistan, where 21,500 additional troops would make a real difference.

I accept that Iraq is a disaster no matter what, and can't be won militarily. It is an apostacy that 3000 Americans have died in an unnecessary war. But I am not willing to lose Afghanistan too.

But that is what is certain to happen if we continue focusing on Iran, and if we lose Afghanistan, then literally, the terrorists win. (That might be the only time those words have been used properly.)

As it stands, all signs point to a Taliban re-emergence in Afghanistan in the spring, and that comes in February in the south.

It is time for us to put Afghanistan at the forefront. I support the justified and justifiable war, but I can't support the vanity war George W. Bush is intent on pursuing to the bitter end in Iraq. It is time we all take a hard look at reality, and not just the parts we want to see, and start making some hard choices. And it is time we started framing the issues.

cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose

Meet the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean Region - Great Food and Bad Blood

Too many people are woefully ignorant of the part of the world we have squandered so much blood and treasure over for the last five years...Not the people who read this blog, of course, but the readers of this blog are painfully aware of that tragic fact.

The region is steeped in history and historic rivalries. The history of the region predates the overthrow of the Shah and the seizing of the American Embassy. It predates the Munich Olympics massacre. It predates the overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddegh by a CIA-backed coup. It even predates the British Mandate!

The people of that region have fought over scarce resources and religion for thousands of years, and the rest of the world pretty much ignored the Middle East and left them to their internecine rivalries.

And then some British geologist discovered oil in the region, and the race was on...

Who could meddle first, who could meddle best, who could meddle most effectively, and who could screw the natives the hardest? (It was nearly always the British, for the record. Those Brits really knew how to run an empire back in the day.)

For a century now the western world has been sticking their noses into the affairs of the region, overthrowing heads of state, hoarding the regions one resource and in general, sowing all manner of ill-will and planting the seeds for a bumper-crop of hatred and animosity among the people of the region.

Sending more troops into a region we should be withdrawing from is folly. Instead of extracting them from this clusterfuck, the president wants to send in even more and ramp up the death and destruction, and that is criminal.

What the hell kind of sense did it ever make to declare war and send in the military to fight a transitive verb, anyway?

Never Again

[UPDATE BELOW]
The Sunday Times of London has as a lead story this morning the revelation that Israel has working plans for nuclear strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. The plans call for the use of conventional, laser-guided bombs to "tunnel" into the concrete and rock - up to 70 feet - that shield the nuclear facilities, followed immediately by low-yield nuclear-tipped bunker-buster charges.

Two Israeli Air Force squadrons are training for the mission to take out the Iranian nuclear program with low-yield nuclear weapons.

“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.

The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.

Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said.

Israel is stinging from the ill-advised and poorly conceived war with Lebanon last summer, and from criticism that it's own soldiers have leveled against Ohlmert and the IDF leadership. Now they are feeling like they have something to prove.

The rest of the world needs to let Israel know in no uncertain terms that if they launch a first strike using nuclear weapons, they will be signing their own death warrant. Decency - Humanity - requires that the world shun any country that will use nuclear weaponry. Membership in civilized society demands that decent people repudiate the notion of a nuclear strike. That we are at this point a mere 62 years after the world experienced the horror of nuclear weapons unleashed, makes me weep for our prospects as a race of civilized beings.

Public reaction to this news - worldwide public reaction - must rise as a chorus. This situation is unacceptable and the entire world has an interest in the geopolitics of the middle east.

A swift, stern rebuke is in order. I look to "my people" - Russ Feingold, Carl Levin, Barney Frank, Diane Feinstein, Charles Schummer - Mensches in positions of leadership to step forward and denounce this reckless notion of a nuclear strike by Israelis against Iran.

I grew up uttering the words "never again" but they had a dual meaning. On my mother's side were holocaust survivors. And then there was my Catholic father - who might well have died in an American invasion of the Japanese homeland, but was spared that eventuality and returned from that war to make the Navy his career. He would live on to fight two more wars and father more children, one of whom is me. But when we lit the candles on the high holy days, when we remembered the dead, my father intoned "never again" along with us.

But to him, it invoked visions of a different holocaust.

Update: The Times of London has reported this story before, several times, going all the way back to March 2004. Click here, here, here and here for previous reporting on the topic by the (Murdoch owned) Times of London.

Let's hope a nuclear strike by Israel is no more imminent now than it was all those other times. Hat tip to Laura Rozen at War and Piece for posting the links.

Considering the Shake-up in Progress

A visual to help you keep it all straight...

As the presidential pathologies become manifest, the president goes shopping. General-shopping, that is. Let me elaborate - in health care, you get a special orientation if you have any contact with psychiatric patients. What this additional training boils down to is this: Sociopathic patients shop the staff for those that can be manipulated and taken in. What the president is doing is a version of this, but he is in the position of power. When he got push-back on his grand scheme for an escalation, he went shopping, and now Dave Petraeus is on his way to Iraq and a fourth star.

I have never met Petraeus, but I know a couple of people who have, and they are quick to point out that his second adventure in Mesopotamia wasn't as successful as his first. They also point out that he is a right prick; but most Officers are, and I've never met a General who wasn't, so that's a moot point.

Moving Fallon to the DNI post is a move that gives me a bit of pause. He is highly regarded as a regional conflict analyst and when I envision him in that post, I envision bombs falling on Iran. You put an Admiral in that post when you have plans for the Navy to get in on the action, probably bombing runs launched from carriers in the gulf, as ground forces aren't available for an overland assault. I have no illusion that he will fail the confirmation process, but I hope a lot of tough questions get asked in the vetting, and I hope a lot of questions about Iran are driven home. IF not, the Senators are not doing their jobs, and we will need to inundate them with emails and calls demanding answers.

I have no faith that these Dionysian followers of Mars have any plans for peace. (Peace dividend? Please! There is so much more money to be made on war! What's a few thousand lives of less affluent Americans? Halliburton has a bottom line to consider!) They have never had a plan for security in the aftermath, and their escalation back to previous troop levels is a shell game.

It's already been tried, for the record. They are proposing we restore the troop levels to what they were when it all started to disintegrate. And let's define their "surge" before we go another step further: The "surge" they envision as solving all the problems and allowing them to "win" is really not a surge, but an overlapping of scheduled deployments. They will achieve it by holding troops currently in-theatre in Iraq beyond their scheduled exit dates, and they will step up the deployment of troops currently scheduled to deploy.

This is, by definition, not sustainable. It is a bad idea that will only serve to ramp up casualties and the sowing of anti-American hostility in the region. But it will not be enough to allow them to "win."

Regional Conflict?

Are we headed for a regional conflict in the middle east? The magic 8-ball says it's possible. Remember that Cheney was summoned to Riyahd by King Abdullah a month ago, where the Saudi Royal was not told to go fuck himself as he informed Vice that the House of Saud would throw their support behind the Sunni's in Iraq if the United States pulled out of Iraq before the Sauds are ready for the United States to go.

The United States has been engaging Iran "below the CNN line" for several years. We had barely toppled Saddam when the first American commandos were sent across the border into Iran, snooping for nukes.

The Kurdish areas of Iraq have been a staging ground for Kurdish paramilitaries to train and group and cross the border into the Kurdish areas of Iran and ambush Republican Guard troops.

The United States has been accused of shooting down Iranian aircraft on at least two occasions, killing Republican Guard soldiers.

Now, we learn that the United States has captured Iranian operatives inside Iraq, and they stand accused of plotting attacks against Iraqi security forces. It is - or at least should be - a major embarrasment to the Bush administration that

at least two of the Iranians were in this country on an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month. It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President Bush.

Okay - get your programs out folks. We have the Wahabbist Sunni Saudi's summoning Vice so they can, in person, threaten to fund and materially support the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. We have a Shi'ite dominated government in Iraq that snuck off into the bedroom with Iran and we hear moaning sounds coming down the hallway. We catch Iranian fomenters of violence who are in the country at the invitation of the president in the compound of a Shi'ite power-broker who was less than three weeks ago a guest of the US president at the White House.

When we consider the stability of the region, we have to consider the refugees who have fled the violence of Iraq - about 1.5 million - and relocated to Syria and Jordan, where they are affecting the social fabric of their foster cities.

An overall picture of stability int he cradle of civilization is not inspiring. Syria and Jordan are being internally compromized because they have absorbed many more Iraqi refugees than the social fabric of those countries can bear. (You only think the US has immigration problems!) Then you have your Iranians backing Shi'ite militias and most likely death squads, too. Throw in the threat by the Saudi's to fund the Sunni insurgents that are giving US forces in Iraq fits, and you have four countries with common borders to Iraq that are directly affected by or getting directly involved in the Iraqi Civil War.

And the saddest part of the whole thing is, some of us tried to tell them this would happen, and we cited our sources. We weren't merely dismissed, we were scorned. Those of us who opposed the invasion for months before it was launched were called traitors - and worse. Hatred was fostered by pro-war politicians and their operatives that branded political opponents as the enemy.

The United States went to war on false pretenses at the whim of an idiot child. And the results we see? A treasury going broke, an Army that's broken, three thousand dead Americans, ten thousand wounded and unable to return to service, and an economically vital region of the world on the precipice of regional warfare.

Now I ask once more, and think carefully before you answer: Was toppling Saddam worth any of this?

The Medium is the Message

After a long discussion with my husband, I have decided not to "fill in the blanks" in the Leverett op-ed.

Had the Times printed the redacted parts, the Leveretts would face prison. I will not take it upon myself to give ammunition to this authoritarian regime.

My husband made a very salient point while we were discussing this issue. He pointed out that a redacted report - especially when the information that has been stricken is readily available from other sources - serves to highlight the ridiculous nature of redacting the information in the first place.

On occasion the truly intelligent have been known to get security clearances too.

Redacted Version of Original Op-Ed

This is the New York Times op-ed I posted about yesterday. I will update with the redacted information inserted [in brackets and in red (p.'x')] as I re-read the 34 page report and extract the information.

By FLYNT LEVERETT and HILLARY MANN
Published: December 22, 2006
The New York Times

The Iraq Study Group has added its voice to a burgeoning chorus of commentators, politicians, and former officials calling for a limited, tactical dialogue with Iran regarding Iraq. The Bush administration has indicated a conditional willingness to pursue a similarly compartmented dialogue with Tehran over Iran’s nuclear activities.
Unfortunately, advocates of limited engagement — either for short-term gains on specific issues or to “test” Iran regarding broader rapprochement — do not seem to understand the 20-year history of United States-Iranian cooperation on discrete issues or appreciate the impact of that history on Iran’s strategic outlook. In the current regional context, issue-specific engagement with Iran is bound to fail. The only diplomatic approach that might succeed is a comprehensive one aimed at a “grand bargain” between the United States and the Islamic Republic.

Since the 1980s, cooperation with Iran on specific issues has been tried by successive administrations, but United States policymakers have consistently allowed domestic politics or other foreign policy interests to torpedo such cooperation and any chance for a broader opening. The Reagan administration’s engagement with Iran to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon came to grief in the Iran-contra scandal. The first Bush administration resumed contacts with Tehran to secure release of the last American hostages in Lebanon, but postponed pursuit of broader rapprochement until after the 1992 presidential election.

In 1994, the Clinton administration acquiesced to the shipment of Iranian arms to Bosnian Muslims, but the leak of this activity in 1996 and criticism from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Robert Dole shut down possibilities for further United States-Iranian cooperation for several years.

These episodes reinforced already considerable suspicion among Iranian leaders about United States intentions toward the Islamic Republic. But, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, senior Iranian diplomats told us that Tehran believed it had a historic opportunity to improve relations with Washington. Iranian leaders offered to help the United States in responding to the attacks without making that help contingent on changes in America’s Iran policy — a condition stipulated in the late 1990s when Tehran rejected the Clinton administration’s offer of dialogue — calculating that cooperation would ultimately prompt fundamental shifts in United States policy.

The argument that Iran helped America in Afghanistan because it was in Tehran’s interest to get rid of the Taliban is misplaced. Iran could have let America remove the Taliban without getting its own hands dirty, as it remained neutral during the 1991 gulf war. Tehran cooperated with United States efforts in Afghanistan primarily because it wanted a better relationship with Washington.

But Tehran was profoundly disappointed with the United States response. After the 9/11 attacks, xxx xxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xx set the stage for a November 2001 meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s six neighbors and Russia. xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx Iran went along, working with the United States to eliminate the Taliban and establish a post-Taliban political order in Afghanistan.

In December 2001, xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx x Tehran to keep Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the brutal pro-Al Qaeda warlord, from returning to Afghanistan to lead jihadist resistance there. xxxxx xxxxxxx so long as the Bush administration did not criticize it for harboring terrorists. But, in his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush did just that in labeling Iran part of the “axis of evil.” Unsurprisingly, Mr. Hekmatyar managed to leave Iran in short order after the speech. xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx the Islamic Republic could not be seen to be harboring terrorists.

xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxx xxx xx xxxxxxx This demonstrated to Afghan warlords that they could not play America and Iran off one another and prompted Tehran to deport hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives who had fled Afghanistan.

Those who argue that Iran did not cause Iraq’s problems and therefore can be of only limited help in dealing with Iraq’s current instability must also acknowledge that Iran did not “cause” Afghanistan’s deterioration into a terrorist-harboring failed state. But, when America and Iran worked together, Afghanistan was much more stable than it is today, Al Qaeda was on the run, the Islamic Republic’s Hezbollah protégé was comparatively restrained, and Tehran was not spinning centrifuges. Still, the Bush administration conveyed no interest in building on these positive trends.

xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx x xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxx x xx x x xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xx

From an Iranian perspective, this record shows that Washington will take what it can get from talking to Iran on specific issues but is not prepared for real rapprochement. Yet American proponents of limited engagement anticipate that Tehran will play this fruitless game once more — even after numerous statements by senior administration figures targeting the Islamic Republic for prospective “regime change” and by President Bush himself that attacking Iran’s nuclear and national security infrastructure is “on the table.”

Our experience dealing with xxxx xxxx Iranian diplomats over Afghanistan and in more recent private conversations in Europe and elsewhere convince us that Iran will not go down such a dead-end road again. Iran will not help the United States in Iraq because it wants to avoid chaos there; Tehran is well positioned to defend its interests in Iraq unilaterally as America flounders. Similarly, Iran will not accept strategically meaningful limits on its nuclear capabilities for a package of economic and technological goodies.

Iran will only cooperate with the United States, whether in Iraq or on the nuclear issue, as part of a broader rapprochement addressing its core security concerns. This requires extension of a United States security guarantee — effectively, an American commitment not to use force to change the borders or form of government of the Islamic Republic — bolstered by the prospect of lifting United States unilateral sanctions and normalizing bilateral relations. This is something no United States administration has ever offered, and that the Bush administration has explicitly refused to consider.

Indeed, no administration would be able to provide a security guarantee unless United States concerns about Iran’s nuclear activities, regional role and support for terrorist organizations were definitively addressed. That is why, at this juncture, resolving any of the significant bilateral differences between the United States and Iran inevitably requires resolving all of them. Implementing the reciprocal commitments entailed in a “grand bargain” would almost certainly play out over time and in phases, but all of the commitments would be agreed up front as a package, so that both sides would know what they were getting.

Unfortunately, the window for pursuing a comprehensive settlement with Iran will not be open indefinitely. The Iranian leadership is more radicalized today, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, than it was three years ago, and could become more radicalized in the future, depending on who ultimately succeeds Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader. If President Bush does not move decisively toward strategic engagement with Tehran during his remaining two years in office, his successor will not have the same opportunities that he will have so blithely squandered.

Thumpin' - part II

Well. It looks like common sense overtaking an electorate is not a phenomenon limited to the western hemisphere. In Iran, President Mahmood Ahmidenijad has been handed a thumpin' something along the lines of the one President Bush received last month.

You gotta give the Iranians their due, by golly. They only put up with Ahmidenijad's nonsense for one year. It took us six years to give Bush the swift kick he should have received from Texas voters in 1994.

All over the country moderate conservative candidates received the majority of the vote, delivering a stinging rebuke to Ahmidenijad and his blustering anti-Israel, nationalist rhetoric.

From the historically significant city of Shiraz in the south, to the breathtaking Bandar e' Abbas on the coast, to the provincial capital of Rasht in northern Iran, not one pro-Ahmadinejad candidate won a seat on any city council. Anti-Ahmidenijad candidates for seats on the Assembly of Experts, a panel of clerics that oversees the president, also did very well. Former president Rafsanjani, who lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election runoff won a seat on that august body. Mr. Rafsanjani won almost twice as many votes as his hard-liner opponent.

Like I said, a thumpin' was administered.

The Mullahs let the inflammatory little weasel Ahmidenijad become president for one reason and one reason only. To stick a thumb in the eye of George aWol Bush for that "Axis of Evil" crack.

Now the Iranians see Bush as vulnerable, and the Mullahs are comfortable letting the more moderate candidates being their lightning rod back in line. Make no mistake, if the Mullahs objected, those moderate candidates would not have been on the ballot. That they were is telling, in and of itself.

You can bet that the Bush team will try to spin this as a victory for him - Ahmidenijad was rebuked because "the Iranians know aWol means business" and they don't want to face his fury.

Bullshit.

Just the opposite. This was a thumpin' for Bush almost as much as it was for his equally odious Iranian counterpart.