In the “Is Zarqawi still dead?” department —

A wave of bombings hit the oil city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, killing 14 people in what was seen as an attempt by al Qaeda to show that the death of its leader in Iraq would not stop it.

The bombings came a day after al Qaeda in Iraq named a successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. air strike last week, and vowed the new leader would press on with a campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings.

“The terrorists want to send a message that they are staying active despite the fact that Zarqawi was killed,” said Rizgar Ali, the head of Kirkuk’s governing council.

President Bush can rest assured that his lobotomized base will be distracted by the new villain, and will not notice that most of the violence in Iraq is not coming from al Qaeda or any facsimile thereof. Evil is so much easier to understand when the good guys and bad guys sort themselves into two opposing teams.

See also comments at TomDispatch.

Michael Yon says that we who oppose the Iraq War should stop drawing grand conclusions from the Haditha incident until we know all the facts:

In the absence of clear facts, most people know that a rush to judgment serves no one. What word, then, properly characterizes the recent media coverage of Haditha, when analysis stretches beyond shotgun conclusions to actually attributing motive and assigning blame? No rational process supports a statement like: “We don’t know what happened, but we know why it happened and whose fault it is.”

Yon goes on to say that delays and coverups are bad, too. They “only make a bigger mess that is harder to clean up.” He seems to me to be a clear-headed guy trying to stay above partisan positions. If you read his post, which I recommend, please do so without preconceived ideas about Yon’s political agenda. I’m not sure I agree with his positions entirely, but they’re worthy of consideration.

But something else struck me about the post. He has witnessed, he said, some accidental killings of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers. One of the Iraqis was a child:

I was present on a day in Baquba when there was a controlled blast of some captured munitions, and somehow the guard towers had not been informed of the upcoming explosion. When the blast occurred, there were children playing near the perimeter, and they flushed and ran. A young guard fired on the children, killing one. He thought they had triggered the blast, something children had often done. I sat up in that same guard tower a day or so later. Soldiers will always talk during nighttime guard duty. The men in his platoon were very upset about the incident, as was the soldier himself. He made the wrong decision, but despite that he had not been warned about the explosion, and that Baquba was a dangerous place where we regularly were losing soldiers, he might never forgive himself.

Yon describes a trend among insurgents in Mosul to kill children who get too close to American soldiers. The enemy, he says, murders children on a daily basis. Yon is not making a “they do it, too” excuse, just creating context. Iraq is a very dangerous place. Mistakes will happen.

Yes, they will, which is a big reason why a military solution was the wrong tool for our political goals in the Middle East.

Back in April 2004, when the war was only a year old, Gen. John Abizaid, said “There is not a purely U.S. military solution to any of the particular problems that we’re facing here in Iraq today.” I’m going further, and saying that a purely U.S. military solution isn’t and never was appropriate to the problems we were or are facing in Iraq, or the Middle East, or from global terrorism. We who oppose the war for its brutality and injustice should not forget to make this point.

Let’s step back from the war for a minute and think about grand strategy, or America’s primary political goals in the Middle East. I realize that the Bush Administration’s explanations of those goals have wandered all over the map. I want also to make a clear distinction between goals and motivations — whatever dark impulses motivated Bush and Crew to become fixated on Iraq is another topic entirely.

The grand objective, as near as I can tell, is to counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East. And, hey, that sounds like a plan. It even (dare I say it?) sounds like a liberal approach to dealing with Islamic terrorism.

Problems come into view as we get closer, however. This strategic approach was developed by that collection of overeducated twits known as the “neoconservatives.” While Bill Clinton was in the White House, the neocons huddled at Project for a New American Century, hatching bold ideas about “benevolent global hegemony,” meaning American domination of the planet, and securing America’s status as the World’s Only Superpower — now and forever. Think old-fashioned nativism gone way proactive. For more on PNAC’s plans, see Bernard Weiner’s PNAC Primer.

Even though most[*] of the neocons got their military education from watching John Wayne movies — or from the mint condition first edition set of Horatio Hornblower books they found in Father’s upstairs study one day when Nanny was distracted — they see themselves as a tough, hairy-chested bunch not given to the womanly pursuits of diplomacy. Why bother, when we’ve got the biggest, baddest motherbleeping military on the planet?

In the 1990s the neocons devised a plan to politically restructure the Middle East, beginning with Iraq. By means of “preemptive war,” the U.S. would remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Once this was accomplished, the Good Democracy Fairy would flit about the land, spreading the pixie dust of free market capitalism, and they would all live happily ever after. When the other Middle East nations saw how happy Iraq was, they’d want a visit from the Good Democracy Fairy, too. And if not, well, we have the biggest, baddest motherbleeping military on the planet. No problemo.

Well, OK, I made up the part about the fairy. But a search through PNAC’s own Clinton-era archives on Iraq reveals that the neocons were adamant that Saddam Hussein must be removed, by force of arms if necessary, and before U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan could carry out his own evil schemes in the region. But the PNACers were always a little hazy on the “what comes next” part.

The neocons wasted no time after the 9/11 attacks re-framing their Iraq plans as an antiterrorist measure. Late in 2001 PNAC executive director Gary Schmitt wrote, ominously, “If two or three years from now Saddam is still in power, the war on terrorism will have failed.” The reasoning behind this conclusion, however, was based on facts not in evidence, or even in reality. Saddam, Schmitt said, was behind the September 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax attacks; he possessed weapons of mass destruction up the yinyang, and he is determined to strike the United States.

As we’ve learned from the Downing Street Memos and elsewhere, the Bush Administration adopted this argument and had already made up its feeble collective mind to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein by March 2002. Thus, after a year of ritualized saber-rattling that served various political ends, we invaded.

The unpleasant side effects of the White House obsession with Iraq are many. Partly because of a loss of focus on Afghanistan, the bulk of al Qaeda slipped across the Afghanistan border and has morphed into something more dangerous and scattered throughout as many as 90 countries. Our activities in Iraq are costing the U.S. somewhere between $6 billion and nearly $10 billion a month, which I’m sure the government of Iran considers money well spent. The Pentagon’s counter-insurgency offensives in Iraq, which have resulted in the loss of thousands of civilians, are a major source of anti-American sentiment in the region. And Iraq appears to be growing less secure. “The American project in Iraq is unraveling,” says David Ignatius in today’s Washington Post.

Let’s see, what were those original political goals again? To counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East? Yeah, we’re doing a heck of a job.

I come from a family with a tradition of American military service going back to the Revolution. So although I was never in the military, I want to think well of our soldiers and Marines and give them lots of benefits of doubts. Many of you will disagree, I’m sure. But I think that if any good comes from our misbegotten Iraq adventure it will be from the hard work and dedication of our troops.

But regarding our principal political goals in the Middle East, a military solution was the wrong solution. Even against the terrorists who no doubt would like to strike the U.S. again, the military should be only part of the toolkit. There are times when a military solution is very appropriate — I certainly didn’t mind going after al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But it’s one thing to send troops after objectives like al Qaeda training camps, and another to send troops to spread American hegemony or to make the world safe for free markets.

Soldiers are not diplomats, or ambassadors, or policemen. And they’re also not robots who won’t make regrettable mistakes, or who never snap under stress.

Sometimes when I’ve badmouthed the war, some rightie will come along and sneer, What is it about bringing democracy to the Middle East you don’t like? And, y’know, I’m fine with bringing democracy to the Middle East. And if it could be done by means of a military solution, maybe that would be an argument for the Iraq War. But real-world examples of formerly totalitarian nations that were democratized successfully by means of a military intervention by another nation are darn hard to come by.

As I explained in more detail here, Japan after World War II is not a pure example. By a constitution adopted in 1889, Japan had established a democratically elected parliament long before World War II. Early in the 20th century Japan made serious strides toward democratizing itself before the military establishment seized power in the 1930s. People who understand Japan better than I do tell me the government of Japan after the war is not as different from the government of Japan before the war as most American imagine.

So can anyone think of another example of a nation “restructured” from totalitarianism to democracy by an invading force? I’m drawing a blank.

When we “discuss” the war we all tend to get drawn into issues like the number of civilians and soldiers killed or the evils of war profiteering by military contractors. But while our President continues to make surreal, meaningless speeches promising “victory,” we need to turn the argument away from whether a military victory can be achieved to whether our political objectives can be achieved.

Because we can always achieve military victory. I suspect we still are capable of rendering the entire nation of Iraq into a lifeless wasteland if we put our minds to it. But I doubt that would have the desired effect of enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East
_________________

[*] Please note that the word most is not a synonym of all, so those of you who attempt refute this post by naming the few PNAC members will real military backgrounds will be subject to merciless ridicule.

Let’s study this sequence of events.

November 20, 2005 — U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq, report that on Nov. 19, fifteen civilians and one Marine were killed by a roadside explosion and eight insurgents were killed in subsequent combat. According to Time magazine (Tim McGirk, “One Morning in Haditha,” March 27 issue),

A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with TIME. …

… Soon after the killings, the mayor of Haditha, Emad Jawad Hamza, led an angry delegation of elders up to the Marine camp beside a dam on the Euphrates River. Hamza says, “The captain admitted that his men had made a mistake. He said that his men thought there were terrorists near the houses, and he didn’t give any other reason.”

But the military stood by its initial contention —that the Iraqis had been killed by an insurgent bomb— until January when TIME gave a copy of the video and witnesses’ testimony to Colonel Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

January 2006 — Time magazine told military officials in Baghdad — that Iraqis said the fifteen civilians were not killed by a bomb but were deliberately killed by Marines. According to Time, military officials began to investigate what happened in Haditha in January.

According to Reuters, in January 2006 —

Journalism student Taher Thabet, via an Iraqi human rights group, passes video of bodies and homes where they died to Time magazine. Time says [Captain Jeffrey] Pool dismisses it as al-Qaeda propaganda. But Baghdad military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson recommends investigation into possible foul play.

February 10, 2006 — According to the Associated Press, on this date a Time magazine reporter alerted military coalition authorities that the November 19 incident may have involved Marines deliberately killing civilians. The Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) began an investigation.

February 14, 2006: The New York Times reports that “the first official investigation” of the Haditha killings began on this date. The investigation, Col. Gregory Watt, would be concluded three weeks later (see more below).

February 15, 2006: According to Reuters, “Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, the No. 2 US commander in Iraq, initiates a preliminary investigation” on this date.

March 9, 2006 — Colonel Watt described the findings of his investigation to Lt. Gen. Chiarelli. Chiarelli directs the (NCIS) to investigate further, according to Reuters.

March 19, 2006 — Matthew Schofield of Knight Ridder reported that “Navy investigators announced last week that they were looking into whether Marines intentionally killed 15 Iraqi civilians – four of them women and five of them children – during fighting last November.” Time magazine posts a web exclusive by Tim McGirk:

In January, after Time presented military officials in Baghdad with the Iraqis’ accounts of the Marines’ actions, the U.S. opened its own investigation, interviewing 28 people, including the Marines, the families of the victims and local doctors. According to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military’s initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (ncis), which will conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting civilians. Lieut. Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing, spokeswoman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, told Time the involvement of the ncis does not mean that a crime occurred. And she says the fault for the civilian deaths lies squarely with the insurgents, who “placed noncombatants in the line of fire as the Marines responded to defend themselves.”

April 8, 2006: Nancy A. Youssef of Knight Ridder reported that “the Marines relieved of duty three leaders of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which had responsibility for Haditha when the shooting occurred.”

May 17, 2006: Rep. John Murtha appears on MSNBC’s Hardball. Murtha said stress on our troops and failure by the Bush Administration to meet the needs of troops were the root causes of the atrocity.

May 18, 2006: Right blogosphere goes ballistic on Murtha, calling him “dishonorable,” a “traitor,” and advocating he be censured.

May 27, 2006: Pentagon announces Marines could face murder charges.

May 30, 2006: Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S., Samir Sumaidaie, tells CNN that he heard about the killings at Haditha …

… very soon after the event in November from some relatives. And as it happened, my own security detail [man] comes from that neighborhood. And his home is hardly a hundred yards from the home which was hit.

And he was in touch through the Internet with his folks and neighbors. And the situation which he reported to me was that it was a cold-blooded killing. …

… I was at the United Nations, and I found it unbelievable that the Marines would go in and kill members of a family who had nothing to do with combat. But I was under pressure by my friends and relatives to raise this issue.

Without any evidence in my hand, I didn’t really want to make any claims that I could not substantiate. That was, remember, before any video came out. It was just word of mouth, people telling me what happened.

And I know the power of the rumor and the power of allegations without foundation. But in this case, it was more than that.

The Ambassador also said one of his cousins had been shot by Marines in a separate incident.

I’ve already commented on the Haditha killings here and here. Now I’m just looking at how the story emerged and how the U.S. military responded. As you can see from what I pieced together from news stories, it isn’t clear exactly when U.S. military officials in Iraq became aware of the allegations. Maybe it was January, maybe February, but maybe earlier. Nor is it clear when the military began to investigate the allegations; maybe it was two months after the incident, maybe three. The NCIS may have become involved in February, or maybe March.

Even if the top brass in Iraq were unaware of what might have happened, it sounds like the allegations were well known to the Iraqis of Haditha, and their friends and relatives. So the suggestion by some righties that talking about Haditha undermines the war effort doesn’t make much sense.

Today Eric Schmitt and David Cloud report for the New York Times,

A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq.

Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the marines’ story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, the official said. …

… The three-week inquiry was the first official investigation into an episode that was first uncovered by Time magazine in January and that American military officials now say appears to have been an unprovoked attack by the marines that killed 24 Iraqi civilians. The results of Colonel Watt’s investigation, which began on Feb. 14, have not previously been disclosed.

It is now more than six months since whatever it was that happened, happened, which is six months for word-of-mouth about what happened to spread through Iraq. I am skeptical that the investigation into what happened needed to take that long. Even if the preliminary investigation by Col. Watt concluded on March 9, that’s more than three months ago. Now we’re getting leaks from senior military officials. The charges are serious, but the facts of the case don’t seem so complex that it would take this long to either obtain indictments or put forth evidence that the allegations are false.

Schmitt and Cloud continue,

Colonel Watt also reviewed payments totaling $38,000 in cash made within weeks of the shootings to families of victims.

What does “within weeks” mean? January? February?

In an interview Tuesday, Maj. Dana Hyatt, the officer who made the payments, said he was told by superiors to compensate the relatives of 15 victims, but was told that rest of those killed had been deemed to have committed hostile acts, leaving their families ineligible for compensation.

After the initial payments were made, however, those families demanded similar payments, insisting their relatives had not attacked the marines, Major Hyatt said.

Major Hyatt said he was authorized by Colonel Chessani and more senior officers at the marines’ regimental headquarters to make the payments to relatives of 15 victims.

Colonel Chessani “was part of the chain of command that gives the approval,” Major Hyatt said.

Over on the Right, Captain Ed links to the Schmitt and Cloud New York Times story and says,

From this description, rather than the impression of official denial and cover-up, the Marine Corps took decisive action early to ensure that evidence could be retained and that investigators started working on unraveling the deaths in Haditha. By the time that Time reported this incident publicly in the March 27th issue, the US military had already determined that war crimes had potentially been committed at Haditha. Time Magazine reported as much in its story, noting that it presented the military with the information that started the investigation.

If the US military had already determined that war crimes had potentially been committed by March 27, IMO they should have been a hell of a lot more pro-active about making information public and obtaining indictments asap. Seems to me that time is of the essence. The longer the military remains silent, the worse the rumors and the suspicions become.

And, frankly, if Rep. Murtha hadn’t started talking about Haditha a couple of weeks ago, we in the U.S. probably would know even less about what happened than we’ve learned so far.

See also: “A reporter’s shock at the Haditha allegations” by Arwa Damon, CNN.

Cross posted to The American Street.

This is rude —

… all the good and loyal writers over the borderline in Right Blogsylvania hate the troops of the United States. It is the only logical conclusion, if you believe that the war is a mistake of such gigantic proportion that one day underground monuments will be built as a way of burying the disgrace brought on this nation by those who planned and encouraged this debacle. Yeah, it’ll be like an iceberg, with just the top of it visible aboveground where the individual dead soldiers can be listed, but below will be the largest part, to represent the magnitude of the treachery done to America by its “leaders.” When do we reach the tipping point where support of the Iraq War simply means you wish death upon more and more American soldiers? Or are we there already there?

So, when Michelle Malkin makes her solemn tribute to war dead, saying “Freedom is not free,” she could just as well say, “I don’t care who dies so my verson of imposed ‘liberty’ can be shoved into any place I decide needs it.”

Didja ever notice that people who keep reminding us that “freedom isn’t free” are the same ones who don’t lift a finger themselves to either defend it or take care of it?

Or, as Dr. Atrios put it yesterday, “The willingness to send others off to die for a misguided war because you wet your pants after 9/11 is called ‘cowardice’ not courage.”

Righties just hate it when somebody badmouths the Iraq War. I think this is because they hate interruptions in their fantasy life. For example, Victor Davis Hanson writes about Iraq as if he’s expecting the victory parade any minute now.

…what did 2,400 brave and now deceased Americans really sacrifice for in Iraq, along with thousands more who were wounded? And what were billions in treasure spent on? And what about the hundreds of collective years of service offered by our soldiers? What exactly did intrepid officers in the news like a Gen. Petreus, or Col. McMaster, or Lt. Col Kurilla fight for? …

… The Kurds would remain in perpetual danger. The Shiites would simply be harvested yearly, in quiet, by Saddam’s police state. The Marsh Arabs would by now have been forgotten in their toxic dust-blown desert. …

Yes, Iraqis are so much better off now. Nir Rosen wrote in yesterday’s WaPo …

Under the reign of Saddam Hussein, dissidents called Iraq “the republic of fear” and hoped it would end when Hussein was toppled. But the war, it turns out, has spread the fear democratically. Now the terror is not merely from the regime, or from U.S. troops, but from everybody, everywhere.

Oh, wait … Um, Victor Davis Hanson continues,

… We should remember the achievement this Memorial Day of those in the field who alone crushed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, stayed on to offer a new alternative other than autocracy and theocracy, and kept a targeted United States safe from attack for over four years.

The reality is that the “crushed” Taliban is making a comeback. Today, thousands of grateful Afghanis rioted in Kabul after an American military truck crashed into a dozen cars on the north side of town, killing and wounding several people. Iraq is being taken over by our buddies in Iran and is well on the way toward becoming an Islamic theocracy. And whether the effort in Iraq did a dadblamed thing to make us safer is purely a matter of faith.

But Hanson’s got his lawn chair parked by the curb, and he’s got his balloons and flags and he knows that victory parade is just around the corner. I’m sure he finds us naysayers tiresome. We’re spoiling the parade.

Today a number of rightie bloggers express concern that Rep. John Murtha’s blabbing about the alleged massacre of civilians by U.S. troops at Haditha will hurt the war effort. IMO this exemplifies the classic colonialist attitude toward the simple swarthy natives, who won’t notice they’re oppressed if we don’t tell them. But the Gulf Times of Qatar says that Iraqis don’t consider a civilian massacre by U.S. troops to be news.

Word that US Marines may have killed two dozen Iraqi civilians in “cold-blooded” revenge after an insurgent attack has shocked Americans but many Iraqis shrug it off as an every day fact of life under occupation.

Despite US military denials, many Iraqis believe killing of men, women and children at the hands of careless or angry American soldiers is common. No reliable statistics are available

I very much hope this is not true, but if a large portion of the Iraqi population believes it is true, then a “rush to judgment” on Rep. Murtha’s part is the least of our problems in Iraq. If we are serious about getting some kind of good outcome in Iraq, such allegations need to be investigated promptly and vigorously, and the U.S. military in Iraq must demonstrate in no uncertain terms that abuse of innocent civilians will not be tolerated. And when allegations are unfounded, then the facts must be made clear and public asap. But pretending everything is just hunky-dory when it’s not is counter-productive to the war effort.

Unless, of course, the “war effort” you are rooting for is a fantasy that lives only in your own head, in which case unpleasant news will get in the way of your glorious imagination.

And then there’s the Dreamweaver in Chief, who enjoys rotating fantasies of being either Ronald Reagan or Harry Truman fighting either the Cold War or World War II. Next he may assume the identity of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years’ War.

The collective fantasies of the Right wouldn’t be such a problem except that they use real soldiers and real wars in their play-acting. Maybe we could get them interested in paintball or Final Conquest. They could enjoy their fantasies and we could get the real soldiers back.

Following up the last couple of posts, on deteriorating conditions in Iraq — Sidney Blumenthal writes in Salon (via True Blue Liberal):

This latest “turning point” reveals an Iraqi state without a social contract, a government without a center, a prime minister without power and an American president without a strategy. Each sectarian group maintains its own militia. Each leader’s influence rests on these armed bands, separate armies of tens of thousands of men. The militias have infiltrated and taken over key units of the Iraqi army and local police, using them as death squads, protection rackets and deterrent forces against enemies. Reliable statistics are impossible, but knowledgeable reporters estimate there are about 40 assassinations a day in Iraq. Ethnic cleansing is sweeping the country. From Kirkuk in the north to Baghdad in the middle to Basra in the south, Kurds are driving out Turkmen and Arabs, Shiites are killing Sunnis, and the insurgency enjoys near unanimous support among Sunnis.

So what does Bush have to say about it?

In his speech on Monday referring to another “turning point,” President Bush twice spoke of “victory.” “Victory” is the constant theme he has adopted since last summer, when he hired public opinion specialist Peter Feaver for the National Security Council. Feaver’s research claims that the public will sustain military casualties so long as it is persuaded that they will lead to “victory.” Bush clings to this P.R. formula to explain, at least to himself, the decline of his political fortunes. “Because we’re at war, and war unsettles people,” he said in an interview with NBC News last week. To make sense of the disconcerting war, he imposes his familiar framework of us vs. them, “the enemy” who gets “on your TV screen by killing innocent people” against himself.

In his Monday speech, Bush reverted yet again to citing Sept. 11, 2001, as the ultimate justification for the Iraq war. Defiant in the face of terrorists, he repeated whole paragraphs from his 2004 campaign stump speech. “That’s just the lessons of September the 11th that I refuse to forget,” he said. Stung by the dissent of the former commanders of the U.S. Army in Iraq who have demanded the firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Bush reassured the audience that he listens to generals. “I make my mind up based not upon politics or political opinion polls, but based upon what the commanders on the ground tell me is going on,” he said.

Yet currently serving U.S. military commanders have been explicitly telling him for more than two years, and making public their view, that there is no purely military solution in Iraq. For example, Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander, said on April 12, 2004: “There is not a purely U.S. military solution to any of the particular problems that we’re facing here in Iraq today.”

In defending the war, righties like to point to the alleged high-minded goals. What is it about bringing democracy to the Middle East you don’t like? they sneer. And, y’know, I’m fine with democracy in the Middle East. I’m sure that Condi and Dick and crew are right that if Iraq and other nations of the Middle East were to become stable and democratic the whole world would benefit. The catch is that this is not the sort of goal that lends itself to a purely military solution. If, indeed, one nation could lead another nation — a nation on the other side of the world with a hugely different culture — to democracy, I suspect the way to do it is through the slow, patient work of cultural, economic, and political diplomacy. But the Bushies figured they could do the job a lot quicker through a purely military solution. All they had to do was invade and destroy the current government, and the Iraqis naturally would revert to the universal default form of government, democracy.

What the Bushies didn’t realize is that people of other cultures have very different notions of what is default.

At this point the rightie is dancing around, yelling what about Japan? Well, what about it? I realize that American popular history says 1940s Japan was a monarchy until General MacArthur gave them a democratic constitution and a representative government, but that is not exactly so. First, the role of the Japanese emperor before the war was not analogous to that of a European king; he had influence, but political power rested in an oligarchy made up of the ruling class. Emperor Hirohito didn’t have much to do with governing Japan, even though on paper he was the sovereign.

In the 1920s political power in Japan shifted away from the nobility and toward its elected parliament — yes, I said elected parliament — and democratic political parties. The democratically elected parliament had been established by a constitution adopted in 1889.

In the 1930s the military establishment — men who advocated purely military solutions — came to power and began to call the shots. Literally. And a few years later Japan was utterly crushed.

The postwar constitution, adopted in 1947, gave sovereignty to the people and guaranteed basic civil liberties for the first time in Japan. But as a practical matter the form of government the Japanese enjoyed after World War II was not as different from what they had before as Americans imagine.

There are myriad other distinctions, such as the fact that the Japanese had a unified national/cultural identity that Iraqis lack. After the war the Japanese people could still look to their own emperor as their symbolic head of state. And I suspect the Confucian/Buddhist ethical sensibilities imported long before from China made a huge difference as well, although that’s too complex a topic to take on right now. But the larger point is that the United States did not introduce representative government to Japan for the first time and turn a monarchy into a democracy. And without Japan, examples of totalitarian nations successfully forced to become democratic by another nation, through a purely military solution, are mighty hard to come by.

Blumenthal continues,

Newsweek reported this week that the U.S. military, in fact, is no longer pursuing a strategy for “victory.” “It is consolidating to several ‘superbases’ in hopes that its continued presence will prevent Iraq from succumbing to full-flown civil war and turning into a failed state. Pentagon strategists admit they have not figured out how to move to superbases, as a way of reducing the pressure—and casualties—inflicted on the U.S. Army, while at the same time remaining embedded with Iraqi police and military units. It is a circle no one has squared. But consolidation plans are moving ahead as a default position, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has talked frankly about containing the spillover from Iraq’s chaos in the region.”

Yet Bush continues to declare as his goal (with encouragement from his polling expert on the NSC) the victory that the U.S. military has given up on. And he continues to wave the banner of a military solution against “the enemy,” although this “enemy” consists of a Sunni insurgency whose leadership must eventually be conciliated and brought into a federal Iraqi government and of which the criminal Abu Musab al-Zarqawi faction and foreign fighters are a small part.

Bush’s belief in a military solution, moreover, renders moot progress on a political solution, which is the only potentially practical approach. His war on the Sunnis simply agitates the process of civil war. The entire burden of progress falls on the U.S. ambassador, whose inherent situation as representative of the occupying power inside the country limits his ability to engage in the international diplomacy that might make his efforts to bring factions together possible. Khalilzad’s tentative outreach to Iran, in any case, was shut down by Washington. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for her part, finds herself in Bulgaria, instead of conducting shuttle diplomacy in Amman, Jordan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Ankara, Turkey; and Tehran. The diplomatic vacuum intensifies the power vacuum in Iraq, exciting Bush’s flights of magical thinking about victory: I speak, therefore it is.

Bush’s Iraq policy, insane as it is, makes sense to hard-core righties. It makes sense to people who divide the world into two basic groups — “Americans” and “foreigners.” It makes sense to xenophobes who believe the foreigners want nothing more than to be just like Americans. It makes sense to authoritarians who assume that the only smart way to deal with people is by force. Diplomacy is for weenies. Considering foreigners’ point of view is appeasement. Appeasement is weak. Force is strong. We are strong. Therefore, we use force.

The whole insanity of the Global War on Terror is that righties insist it must be a literal, shoot-’em-up, John Wayne landing on the beach-type war. But you send armies to fight other armies, not a tactic. If your goal is to change peoples’ hearts and minds, shooting at them seems a wrongheaded way to go about it.

Righties insist on a hard, rigid approach to fighting terrorism. But terrorism is fluid. It is not bound by territory. It perpetually seeks new channels for expressing itself. In time, what is fluid will nearly always defeat what is hard and rigid, like water wearing away a rock.

Nothing in the world is softer and weaker than water.
Yet nothing is better at attacking the hard and strong.
There is no substitute for it.
The weak overcomes the strong; the soft overcomes the hard.
Everyone knows this, but no one puts it into practice. — Tao Teh Ching, verse 78

Blumenthal continues,

Bush doesn’t know that he can’t achieve victory. He doesn’t know that seeking victory worsens his prospects. He doesn’t know that the U.S. military has abandoned victory in the field, though it has been reporting that to him for years. But the president has no rhetoric beyond “victory.”

Bush’s chance for a quick victory in Iraq evaporated when the neoconservative fantasy collapsed almost immediately after the invasion. But the “make-believe” of “liberation” that failed to provide basic security set in motion “fratricidal violence,” as Nir Rosen writes in his new book, “In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq,” based on firsthand observation of the developing insurgency in the vacuum created by U.S. policy.

Whether Bush is or isn’t the flaming idiot we sometimes make him out to be is a matter of opinion. But it’s plain he has a rigid mind, as well as a lazy one. And, I suspect, his thinking remains parochial — he views the world through the prism of American national politics. What is actually happening in Iraq may interest him less than the war’s value to him in political capital. In that sense, what the American people think is happening in Iraq is the only relevant reality.

Blumenthal continues,

On May 15, Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political advisor, gave a speech revealing one of his ideas about politics. “I think,” he said, “there’s also a great utility in looking at game changers. What are the things that will allow us to fundamentally change people’s behavior in a different way?” Since Sept. 11, Rove has made plain that terrorism and war are the great game changers for Bush.

But while war may be the game changer for Bush’s desire to put in place a one-party state, forge a permanent Republican majority, redefine the Constitution and the relationships of the branches of the federal government, and concentrate power in the executive, Bush has only the rhetoric of “victory.” He has not stated what would happen the day after “victory.” Although a victory parade would be his political nightmare, now the absence of victory is his nightmare. With every proclaimed “turning point,” “victory” becomes ever more evanescent. He has no policy for victory and no politics beyond victory.

To a rightie, those who speak against purely military solutions to America’s foreign policy problems are “anti-military” and “self-loathing.” We liberals, they think, oppose the “very defense of the world’s one true beacon of freedom. … we do not own that freedom but are tasked with her defense and care by default.”

We liberals think that shredding the Constitution and allowing the chief executive to take on unlimited power and operate in near total secrecy is not the smart way to defend freedom. We think sending our mighty military halfway around the world to get bogged down in sand is not a smart way to defend the nation. Righties cannot understand that our problem is not with their high-minded goals, but with their stupid solutions.

Following up the last post — Dan Froomkin writes today,

President Bush’s exclusive focus on suicide bombers — “suiciders,” in his parlance — when asked about violence in Iraq yesterday once again suggests that he lacks a realistic sense of the current state of chaos in that country.

“That’s the — but that’s one of the main — that’s the main weapon of the enemy, the capacity to destroy innocent life with a suicider,” Bush said yesterday in a brief public appearance with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Suicide bombings in Iraq do sometimes result in dramatic death tolls. And their aftereffects tend to show up more often in television footage than, say, the carnage wrought by secretive death squads.

But they’re hardly the main weapon afflicting either U.S. soldiers or civilians in Iraq today.

As anyone who monitors the situation in Iraq knows, a vastly greater threat to the 133,000 U.S. troops currently stationed there is posed by improvised explosive devices left along roadsides and elsewhere — and, to a lesser degree, by gunfire and mortar fire from armed insurgents trying very much to stay alive.

And as far as Iraqi civilians are concerned, the primary security threat these days comes from paramilitary forces committing widespread sectarian murder, unimpeded by anyone in authority.

Don’t miss “Armed Groups Propel Iraq Toward Chaos” by Dexter Filkins in the New York Times, discussed in the last post below.

Reliable statistics are hard to come by, but ask people with first-hand experience in Iraq, and they’ll most likely tell you that Bush’s emphasis on suicide bombings is at best way out of date, and at worst an example of his utter cluelessness.

Was Bush being accidentally or intentionally ignorant? It’s hard to know for sure.

Froomkin provides the transcript of yesterday’s remarks —

The question came from ABC News’s Martha Raddatz.

“Q The U.S. has the most powerful military in the world, and they have been unable to bring down the violence in any substantial way in several of the provinces. So how can you expect the Iraqis to do that?

“PRESIDENT BUSH: If one were to measure progress on the number of suiciders, if that’s your definition of success, I think it gives — I think it will — I think it obscures the steady, incremental march toward democracy we’re seeing. In other words, it’s very difficult — you can have the most powerful army of the world — ask the Israelis what it’s like to try to stop suiciders — it is a difficult task to stop suicide bombers. That’s the — but that’s one of the main — that’s the main weapon of the enemy, the capacity to destroy innocent life with a suicider.

“And so I view progress as, is there a political process going forward that’s convincing disaffected Sunnis, for example, to participate? Is there a unity government that says it’s best for all of us to work together to achieve a common objective which is democracy? Are we able to meet the needs of the 12 million people that defied the car bombers? To me, that’s success. Trying to stop suiciders — which we’re doing a pretty good job of on occasion — is difficult to do. And what the Iraqis are going to have to eventually do is convince those who are conducting suiciders who are not inspired by al Qaeda, for example, to realize there’s a peaceful tomorrow. And those who are being inspired by al Qaeda, we’re just going to have to stay on the hunt and bring al Qaeda to justice. And our Army can do that, and is doing that right now.”

Suiciders?

Froomkin also points to “how Bush sets up a false straw-man argument in his response, between either measuring success by suicide bombing or by the ‘march to democracy.'”

Eric Alterman’s column today is a great accompaniment to Froomkin.

Former military man and present-day historian Andrew Bacevich on the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz attitude toward 9/11, here.

Yes, it was a disaster. Yes, it was terrible. But by God, this was a disaster that could be turned to enormous advantage. Here lay the chance to remove constraints on the exercise of American military power, enabling the Bush administration to shore up, expand, and perpetuate U.S. global hegemony. Toward that end, senior officials concocted this notion of a Global War on Terror, really a cover story for an effort to pacify and transform the broader Middle East, a gargantuan project which is doomed to fail. Committing the United States to that project presumed a radical redistribution of power within Washington. The hawks had to cut off at the knees institutions or people uncomfortable with the unconstrained exercise of American power. And who was that? Well, that was the CIA. That was the State Department, especially the State Department of Secretary Colin Powell. That was the Congress.

Meanwhile, Gregory D. Foster, professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the National Defense University. wrote a brilliant op-ed in The Baltimore Sun a few weeks back [link broken]. Here are some excerpts:

Even as Long War rhetoric artfully circumvents such politically discomfiting terminology as “insurgency,” its underlying message should be clear: We dutiful subjects should be quietly patient and not expect too much (if anything) too soon (if at all) from our rulers as they prosecute their unilaterally proclaimed war without end against ubiquitous evil.

The intent of the message is to dull our senses, to dampen our expectations, to thereby deaden the critical, dissenting forces of democracy that produce political turbulence and impede autocratic license. Being warned here amounts to being disarmed – intellectually and civically.

President Bush; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace; the head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. John P. Abizaid; and the recently released Quadrennial Defense Review, among other authoritative purveyors of received wisdom, all warn us that we’re embroiled in – and destined to be further subjected to – what is to be known as a Long War.

It would be one thing if such semantic legerdemain reflected revelatory strategic insight or a more sophisticated appreciation of the intrinsic nature of postmodern conflicts and enemies. But that is not the case. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the cynical view that America’s senior military leaders are willfully playing public relations handmaiden to their political overlords at the expense of a naive, trusting citizenry.

Meanwhile, Juan Cole explains how the armed groups from the Dexter Filkins article got their guns:

The BBC reports that the US gave a contract to a small private firm to import weapons for the Iraqi security forces. It brought in massive amounts of weapons from Bosnia. But the procurement process was complex and involved– you guessed it– subcontractors, and the weapons are hard to trace. It is very likely that a lot ended up in the hands of the guerrillas. What irony. A mania for the private sector has helped turn Iraq into Bosnian using Bosnian weapons. In this Iraq scandal, everywhere you dig you find bodies.

Professor Cole also says that the Sunni 16th Brigade in Dawra, which per Dexter Filkins became a pro-guerrilla death squad, “was a legacy of the Allawi government appointed by Paul Bremer and the UN, which had some serious neo-Baathist facsists in the security positions.” As explained in the last post, the 16th Brigade — a 1,000-man force set up by Iraq’s Ministry of Defense — became a death squad for the insurgents. They were executing people who cooperated with the same government that set up the brigade.

Remember — as they stand up, we’ll stand down. (We’re bleeped.)