Category Archives: Iraq War

Small and Smaller

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Josh Marshall:

We are bigger than Iraq.

By that I do not mean we, as America, are bigger or better than Iraq as a country. I mean that that sum of our national existence is not bound up in what happens there. The country will go on. Whatever happens, we’ll recover from it. And whatever might happen, there are things that matter much more to this country’s future — like whether we have a functioning military any more, whether our economy is wrecked, whether this country tears itself apart over this catastrophe. But we’ll go on and look back at this and judge what happened.

Not so for the president. For him, this is it. He’s not bigger than this. His entire legacy as president is bound up in Iraq. Which is another way of saying that his legacy is pretty clearly an irrecoverable shambles. That is why, as the folly of the enterprise becomes more clear, he must continually puff it up into more and more melodramatic and world-historical dimensions. A century long ideological struggle and the like. For the president a one in a thousand shot at some better outcome is well worth it, no matter what the cost. Because at least that’s a one in a thousand shot at not ending his presidency with the crushing verdict history now has in store. It’s also worth just letting things keep on going as they are forever because, like Micawber, something better might turn up. Going double or nothing by expanding the war into Iran might be worth it too for the same reason. For him, how can it get worse?

And when you boil all this down what it comes down to is that the president now has very different interests than the country he purports to lead.

Ah, perspective. It’s a beautiful thing.

Josh links to a pretty good Washington Post column by Jim Hoagland, titled “Bush’s Vietnam Blunder.” Among other things, Hoagland thinks the “Vietnam” speech was a political blunder. Maybe; whether the speech makes Bush and his war more or less unpopular than they already were remains to be seen. But here is the critical point:

Some military commanders, CIA agents in Iraq, Republican members of Congress, State Department diplomats and others now make their highest priority the protection of their own reputations, careers and institutions — the three blend seamlessly into a single overriding ambition in Washington — for the post-Bush era, which thus draws closer, in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The need to protect the White House, the Pentagon and both major political parties from greater Iraq fallout explains much of the blame being dumped on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at this late date — even though his deficiencies and close links to Iran and Syria were clearly visible when the administration helped install him in the job in 2006. As he has been throughout the Iraq experience, Bush is condemned to play the cards he dealt himself.

Our troops are in Iraq not to protect America, but to protect political careers.

And it’s not just Republicans, of course. Democrats are still so afraid of being labeled “soft” on communism crime terrorism that their own positions on the war are nuanced to death. Frankly, I’ve given up trying to understand precisely where some Democrats stand on the war; all over the place, it seems.

E.J. Dionne writes,

The surest sign of how bad our choices in Iraq have become is the eagerness of both of our political parties to blame the entire mess on the man American officials helped install in his job. After all, it was taken as an American victory back in April 2006 when Maliki replaced Ibrahim al-Jafari, who faced many of the same criticisms as prime minister that Maliki does today.

Now, Maliki is the problem. Among Democrats, both Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton have called for replacing him with “a less divisive and more unifying figure,” as Clinton put it. …

… It’s no accident that American politicians find themselves entangled in Iraqi politics. The president’s troop surge was designed not to achieve some decisive military result but to bring about a political result — to give Iraqis “breathing room” to settle their sectarian differences.

I think the real reason for the surge was to kneecap the Iraq Study Group recommendations that would have taken control of the war away from Bush, but let’s go on …

That’s why both sides in the war debate are talking past each other. Supporters of the administration point to signs of military success and insist that we should keep at it. The administration’s opponents don’t deny some military gains — at considerable cost in American lives. But they argue that the continuing political disarray in Iraq shows that the surge has failed to achieve its primary objective and that we should begin to disentangle our troops from a civil war.

The debate as it’s currently configured puts a much higher short-term political burden on congressional Democrats than on Republicans. The president has the easier political objective: He needs only to block congressional action that would force him to alter his policy. As long as most Republicans stick with him, he wins.

He wins, notice. Not America; just Bush.

Democrats, on the other hand, are in a classic damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don’t situation.

So what else is new?

Congress, which has the constitutional authority to end the war, dithers around with halfway measures designed to encourage, but not force, the President to change his policy. Of course, this is a bit like politely asking a fox to please leave the chickens alone.

There’s more going on beneath the surface than merely scapegoating Maliki, as Glenn Greenwald explains today (must read). Politicians in Washington of both parties seem to have forgotten that We, the People, are still here.

At moments like these someone is bound to start squawking about third parties, which is another road to failure. We’re trapped into a two-party system by the way we hold elections. I still see no alternative to reforming the Democrats, eliminating “Bush Dogs” in the primaries and otherwise sending a message to the Washington elites that they really do need to reckon with us. That will take a few election cycles, unfortunately. And the war goes on.

Selling the Surge

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Various items:

See Think Progress on the ad campaign that will sell the surge. It is sponsored by Freedom Watch, a right-wing front group for the White House headed by former press secretary Ari Fleischer.

The privately-funded ad campaign will run in 20 states, featuring Iraq war vets and families of fallen soldiers arguing that the war should continue. The four ads produced so far by Fleischer’s Freedom’s Watch group contain little more than fear-mongering about an Iraq pullout. “They attacked us and they will again. They won’t stop in Iraq,” one ad says. “It will mean more attacks in America,” says another. Yet another ad warns, “We’ve already had one 9/11, we don’t need another.”

Likening himself to a battlefield general, Fleischer said, “For people who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is coming.”

Let me know if you see ’em. I doubt they’ll bother running the ads in New York.

At Salon, Tim Grieve documents that the mainstream media persists in misquoting Democrats to make them seem supportive of the surge.

As we noted Monday, Sens. Carl Levin and John Warner have returned from Iraq to report that while the “surge” may be producing “measurable results” in reducing violence, they are “not optimistic” that the Iraq government will use its newfound “breathing space” to make the compromises “essential for a political solution in Iraq.”

In a follow-up press conference call with reporters, Levin made it clear that his was no glass-half-full assessment. “The purpose of the surge, by its own terms, was to … give the opportunity to the Iraqi leaders to reach some political settlements,” Levin said. “They have failed to do that. They have totally and utterly failed.”

Fox News’ headline on Levin’s report? Think Progress caught it: “Sens. Warner and Levin Travel to Iraq, Praise Surge Results.”

Read the rest of Grieve’s post to see similar treatment given to a statement by Senator Clinton.

But now the MSM has taken up the narrative that Democrats have conceded the surge is a military success, even though they haven’t. A headline in today’s Washington Post: “Democrats Refocus Message on Iraq After Military Gains.”

Taylor Marsh discusses the media misquotes. See also Media Matters.

Today President Bush will be addressing members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and news reports say he plans to argue in favor of his Iraq War by comparing it to Vietnam. If you don’t already realize how stupid that is, Josh Marshall explains it for you.

And if you didn’t already know that the surge isn’t working, R.J. Eskow explains that for you, too.

Listening To The People On The Ground

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While the folks in DC tussle over whether the Oh-So-Very-Important words of General Petraeus will be delivered publicly or in a closed-door session, and whether the White House did or did not want it to be closed, a number of experienced soldiers have spared us the bother.

In what may for them be a career-limiting error, they have joined together to publish an op-ed in the New York Times. It is clear and refreshing in its honesty and willingness to confront the complexity of issues in Iraq. Particularly when set against the raft of statements from politicians and others who’ve dropped in for a few days of high-level military briefings, the words of these infantrymen and non-coms at the end of a 15-month deployment have a powerful credibility.

Read the whole thing. Here are some samples.

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

As for the political situation,

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

We could listen to the perspective of these men on the front lines, confront the contradictions in our policies and change our approach. Or we could accept the reports from Brookings Institution fly-bys on what the brass told them, and brave words from Senators who travel with armored vehicle escorts and helicopter cover.

Maybe, if we’re lucky, this op-ed won’t just ‘disappear’, but will become something for the cable-news talking heads to furrow brows over. Maybe some will be prompted to demand that the decision-makers in DC, even if not the Decider himself, actually listen to the people on the ground.

Wingnuts Shout Down Troops

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There’s a video of Wesley Clark’s Friday morning keynote speech here. It’s not streaming smoothly for me right now, but maybe it’ll work for you. If the video is watchable it is very much worth watching.

I call it to your attention not just because it was an excellent speech, but because it was a very pro-military speech, and conference attendees — and most of the 1,500 or so people attending the conference were present — cheered and applauded lustily whenever Gen. Clark praised the troops serving in Iraq.

After Gen. Clark’s keynote, he and Jon Soltz of Vote Vets remained to moderate a panel called “The Military and Progressives: Are They Really That Different?” I would have stayed for it but that was at the same time as my religion panel (which went well, btw).

Apparently a veteran in the audience stood up and argued that the surge was working, which seems to have drawn some reaction. LGF headline: “Serviceman shouted down at Yearly Kos.” Yes, once again, we lefties hate the military.

Actually, in his speech Gen. Clark said it was “working” in a purely limited sense, meaning that whatever parts of Iraq are patrolled by U.S. troops do tend to settle down. The problem with that is, of course, that the insurgent/terrorists just move somewhere else, since there aren’t enough troops to be everywhere. And the surge is having no impact on Iraq’s political situation, which was the point of it.

The irony is that if you want to see real anti-troops hysteria, you can’t beat the righties themselves. They went after Scott Beauchamp like a school of piranha. Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money wrote,

…virtually the whole of the right blogosphere erupted in a torrent of the most vile abuse and intimidation against Scott Thomas Beauchamp, based at first on the assertion that he didn’t exist, second on the assertion that he could not be part of the military, and third on the assertion that, even if he were in the military, he must have made it all up. …

… It’s very simple, people. A TNR diarist wrote about a series of events. Righties freaked out, insisting that the stories couldn’t possibly be true. Lefties didn’t assert that it was true, but insisted that it could be factual. Battle ensues. It turns out that the story is, apart from an irrelevant detail, true. Righties claim victory based on that detail, and those who gave credence to the most brutal and idiotic attacks declare the affair over, without bothering to wonder how they got taken in by people who are obviously con artists, and stupid ones at that. TNR diarist, incidentally, is successfully intimidated and effectively silenced.

That last part was, of course, the point. Scott Beauchamp has been shouted down.

Homicide?

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It was one thing when it appeared the Bush Administration was trying to cover up a “friendly fire” death by claiming Pat Tillman was killed by enemy fire. I remember similar episodes from the Vietnam War. I dimly remember a made for television movie about a “friendly fire” coverup, in fact.

But today Martha Mendoza of the Associated Press reports that there is evidence Tillman was killed [deliberately] by another Ranger. Forensic evidence suggests he was shot in the head — three times — by an M16 from only about ten yards away.

I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but this definitely requires more investigation. There will be more congressional hearings next week.

Update: You’ll enjoy this.

He wasn’t so much a patriot as he was apparently an antiwar lefist [sic] who enjoyed chomping on Noam Chomsky.

Not the first, won’t be the last leftist in the ranks. Fact is so is his brother, Kevin. Shame. We used to sniff them out in basic training and help them “out”.

Update 2: See Jesse Lee at the Gavel.

Saturday Cartoons

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For the regular cartoons, see Bob Geiger.

For an irregular cartoon, take a look at Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post. WaPo is running an editorial today that’s so absurd I had to read it three times to be sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks.

As Tbogg says, the shorter version of this rhetorical specimen is “The glaring lack of an exit strategy from Iraq is entirely Harry Reid’s fault.” The less short version is that, in HiattWorld, there is already a bipartisan consensus on what to do about Iraq that is also supported by the White House. The reason this consensus is not being carried out is that Harry Reid is standing in the way.

I’m serious. Get this first paragraph:

THE SENATE Democratic leadership spent the past week trying to prove that Congress is deeply divided over Iraq, with Democrats pressing and Republicans resisting a change of course. In fact that’s far from the truth. A large majority of senators from both parties favor a shift in the U.S. mission that would involve substantially reducing the number of American forces over the next year or so and rededicating those remaining to training the Iraqi army, protecting Iraq’s borders and fighting al-Qaeda. President Bush and his senior aides and generals also support this broad strategy, which was formulated by the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission. Mr. Bush recently said that “it’s a position I’d like to see us in.”

I’m no military expert, but I take it Fred Hiatt isn’t, either, so I say my opinion is at least as informed as his. I question whether a “residual” force could be kept in Iraq for very long. In March 1973, when the last combat troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, the U.S. planned to keep a “residual” force there, also. Two years and one month later, as North Vietnam took control of Saigon, the last Americans were airlifted out. My fear for the “residual” troops is that they would be targeted by insurgents — some of whom are part of the Iraqi military they’d be training — and there’d be not enough protection for them.

The other glaring problem that Hiatt doesn’t see is that, no matter what Bush may say he wants to do, he’s not going to remove combat troops from Iraq until Congress forces him to do so. He’s been making noises about “drawing down” troops numbers since 2004, at least. It ain’t happenin’. He’s been making noises about training Iraqi soldiers to take over “the mission” since 2004. The Iraqi military is never ready to take over.

And the big, fat reality Hiatt isn’t seeing is that while more Republicans talk about changing Iraq policy, so far only four Senators have actually had the guts to vote on changing policy. The rest of the GOP senators “wavering” on Iraq policy are WINOs — “wavering in name only.”

The editorial continues,

The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible.

Let’s see — Republicans were using procedural weaseling to avoid debate and block an up-or-down vote on a proposal to begin troop withdrawal. Hiatt says this is Reid’s fault. Weird.

But so was Mr. Reid’s answer when he was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the United States should manage the explosion of violence that the U.S. intelligence community agrees would follow a rapid pullout. “That’s a hypothetical. I’m not going to get into it,” the paper quoted the Democratic leader as saying.

Nobody’s talking about a “rapid” pullout. The bill the Republicans blocked voting on provided that a withdrawal would begin within 120 days and end by April 2008. And it provided for Hiatt’s deeply beloved “residual” force.

Fred, dear, that’s why Reid called talk of a “rapid” withdrawal “hypothetical.” It’s not because he’s avoiding the issue; it’s because no one is talking about a rapid withdrawal. Do pay attention.

For now Mr. Reid’s cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq don’t matter so much. The result of his maneuvering was to postpone congressional debate until September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report on results of the surge — in other words, just the outcome the White House was hoping for.

In paragraph one, the editorial implied that the White House was on board with the Baker-Hamilton commission recommendations. In this paragraph, the White House is just kidding. But let’s go on …

Harry Reid voted against Reed-Levin to give himself the option of re-introducing it at any time. After the recent vote on Reed-Levin, Reid explained,

Because Republicans continue to block votes on important amendments to the Defense Authorization bill, we can make no further progress on Iraq and this bill at this time.

For these reasons, I have temporarily laid aside the Defense Authorization bill and have entered a motion to reconsider.

But let me be clear to my Republican colleagues — I emphasize the word “temporarily”. We will do everything in our power to change course in Iraq. We will do everything in our power to complete consideration of a Defense Authorization bill. We must do both.

And just to remind my Republican colleagues — even if this bill had passed yesterday, its provisions would not take effect until October.

So we will come back to this bill as soon as it is clear we can make real progress. To that end, I have asked the Democratic Whip and Democratic Manager of the bill to sit down with their counterparts to work on a process to address all outstanding issues related to this bill so the Senate can return to it as soon as possible.

The editorial accuses Reid of avoiding issues and the Dems of “trying to use Iraq as a polarizing campaign issue and as a club against moderate Republicans who are up for reelection.”

The game the Republicans seem to be playing — with Fred’s help — is “let’s obstruct everything the Dems try to do so we can campaign against do-nothing Dems.” But that’s a game that can be played both ways. The point of Reid’s little pajama party was to demonstrate what weasels the Senate Republicans really are. Outside the Senate chamber they talk about changing course; inside the Senate chamber they refuse to allow a change of course. The biggest leverage the Dems have to force the Republicans to get serious about changing course is the 2008 elections. If Republicans don’t want to be “clubbed” with Iraq in the 2008 campaigns, all they have to do is put their votes where their mouths are.

Update: More WaPo propaganda — Paul Kane and Shailagh Murray wrote yesterday that

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid offered no apologies yesterday for his decision to reject compromise efforts to alter President Bush’s Iraq strategy that had the support of a growing number of Republicans.

What Kane and Murray don’t explain is that the so-called “compromise efforts” were a sham. Greg Sargent explains,

Meanwhile, Collins has her own measure calling for withdrawal from Iraq that would force a transition away from the current combat mission but wouldn’t force withdrawal of the troops. The measure — whose exact language hasn’t yet been released, according to the office of its co-sponsor, Senator Ben Nelson — is murky at best. And as best as we can tell, it appears to be riddled with loopholes.

Maybe Collins’ idea is to become a member emeritus of the WINO caucus now, or something.

Kane and Murray wrote that Dem Senator Chuck Schumer said the Nelson-Collins bill would have allowed the war to continue while giving Republicans a safe haven from tough choices. “It would delay them coming on board, because they would say [to their voters], ‘See, I’m trying to do something,’ ” Schumer said.

I guess with WaPo, actually bringing home the troops is less important that saying the troops will be brought home. Someday. Depending on conditions on the ground. As soon as the White House says it’s OK. Whenever.

Update2: Susie writes,

How much does Fred Hiatt get paid under the table to put crap like this on the WashPo editorial page?

I had the same thought. Truly, if Hiatt isn’t already getting paid, he should send the RNC an invoice.

Mugged by Reality

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Today’s Paul Krugman column:

In a coordinated public relations offensive, the White House is using reliably friendly pundits — amazingly, they still exist — to put out the word that President Bush is as upbeat and confident as ever. It might even be true.

What I don’t understand is why we’re supposed to consider Mr. Bush’s continuing confidence a good thing.

Remember, Mr. Bush was confident six years ago when he promised to bring in Osama, dead or alive. He was confident four years ago, when he told the insurgents to bring it on. He was confident two years ago, when he told Brownie that he was doing a heckuva job.

Now Iraq is a bloody quagmire, Afghanistan is deteriorating and the Bush administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate admits, in effect, that thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with Al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident.

What I don’t understand is why we’re supposed to consider Mr. Bush’s continuing confidence a good thing. Well, let’s think about that. I don’t think most Americans are all that confident in Mr. Bush’s “confidence.” But he’s still got his base. And that would be the pseudo conservatives who have mired the nation in the bog of their many social pathologies. The game he’s playing is to contrast himself with the “defeatists” targeted to be scapegoats.

If you missed Keith Olbermann’s special comment last night, you can see the video and read the transcript at Crooks and Liars. In brief, the White House blames the Iraq War’s opponents for the failures of the war.

The fault, brought down — as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter, by a nearly anonymous Under-Secretary of Defense — the fault has tonight been laid on the doorstep of Senator Hillary Clinton and, by extension, at the doorstep of every American — the now vast majority of us — who have dared to criticize this war, or protest it, or merely ask questions about it, or simply, plaintively, innocently, honestly, plead, “don’t take my son; don’t take my daughter.”

Senator Clinton has been sent — and someone has leaked to the Associated Press — a letter, sent in reply to hers, asking if there exists, an actual plan for evacuating U.S. troops from Iraq.

This extraordinary document was written by an Under-Secretary of Defense named Eric Edelman.

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” Edelman writes, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.” Edelman adds: “such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

After that Keith gets a tad miffed. Don’t miss it.

In today’s Washington Post, Eugene Robinson also takes note of Bush’s boundless optimism. Robinson points to the Oval Office pep talk given to nine conservative pundits last week. The pundits described Bush’s demeanor as “sunny,” “upbeat,” “energized,” and “good-humored.” Robinson comments,

Excuse me? I guess he must be in an even better mood since the feckless Iraqi government announced its decision to take the whole month of August off while U.S. troops continue fighting and dying in Baghdad’s 130-degree summer heat.

It’s almost as if Bush were trying to apply the principles of cognitive therapy, the system psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck developed in the 1960s. Beck found that getting patients to banish negative thoughts and develop patterns of positive thinking was helpful in pulling them out of depression. However, Beck was trying to get the patients to see themselves and the world realistically, whereas Bush has left realism far behind.

Beside scapegoating lefties, the other explanation for Bush’s confidence goes back to the subject of the first Wisdom of Doubt post. Our culture has developed a pathological aversion to doubt. Being without doubt is celebrated as a virtue, a strength, a source of moral character. Our President, for example, is a man without doubt, and he seems to think this is what makes him a great president.

Recently Peter Birkenhead wrote a piece for Salon called “Better to Be Hamlet Than King George.” We have created a culture, he said, that confuses leadership with “an almost psychotic form of false optimism.” I’d leave out the “almost.” The Bush Administration, Birkenhead continued, is riddled with people who lack the wisdom of doubt, the grace of humility, and the simple ability to learn from mistakes.

Let’s face it, George Bush doesn’t have to doubt himself, any more than Donald Trump or Tom Cruise or Mitt Romney do. We live in a culture where they will never be forced to examine their prejudices or flaws. Of course, they have been denied the true confidence of people who are brave enough to face their doubts and who know there are worse things than feeling insecure. Like, say, feeling too secure. Pumped up by steroidic pseudo-confidence and anesthetized by doubt-free sentimentality, they are incapable of feeling anything authentic and experiencing the world. But that hasn’t stopped them, and won’t stop others, from succeeding in a society that is more enamored of a non-reality-based conception of leadership than previous generations were.

So here we have Mr. Bush, at the nadir (so far) of his presidency, putting on a demonstration of absolute doubtlessness in front of the faithful scribes. This makes perfect sense, if you understand how they think. To most of us, of course, it’s insanity.

Robinson continues,

“Bush gives the impression that he is more steadfast on the war than many in his own administration and that, if need be, he’ll be the last hawk standing,” wrote Lowry. The president says the results of his recent troop escalation will be evaluated by Gen. David Petraeus, wrote Barone, and not by “the polls.”

Translation: Everybody’s out of step but me.

One of the more unnerving reports out of the president’s seminar with the pundits came from Brooks, who quoted Bush as saying: “It’s more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t exist.”

Those last couple of sentences are doozies, huh? Although the American invasion brought many things to Iraq, so far “freedom” seems in short supply. But (as I’ve argued elsewhere) what Bush is talking about is more an idea of freedom than freedom itself.

It’s also a long-established cornerstone of Wingnutism that liberty comes from God, not government, and for years wingnuts predictably would throw a fit if one argued for the government’s role in the protection of civil liberty. (Of course, if they really believed that they wouldn’t have seen a need for sending armies here and there to effect “regime change” and install “freedom,” or at least an idea of it.) The notion that liberty is a moral entitlement for being human is mostly a legacy of the Enlightenment, which was not a happy era for religious conservatives of the time. But today’s religious conservatives are not above using government to impose their notions of “liberty” — namely, the liberty to oppress the rest of us. They just don’t like government’s protection of civil liberty when government protects other people from them.

Eugene Robinson continues,

It’s bad enough that Osama bin Laden is still out there plotting bloody acts of terrorism, convinced that God wants him to slay the infidels. Now we know that the president of the United States believes God has chosen him to bring freedom to the world, that he refuses to acknowledge setbacks in his crusade and that he flat-out doesn’t care what “the polls” — meaning the American people — might think. I’m having trouble seeing the bright side. I think I need cognitive therapy.

You and me both, Eugene. But in today’s Los Angeles Times, Rosa Brooks argues that Bush has imposed his idea of reality on the world, in spite of his blunders.

In a much-quoted 2004 New York Times Magazine article, journalist Ron Suskind described a 2002 conversation with a senior Bush advisor — widely assumed to be Karl Rove — who added an extra gloss to Kristol’s aphorism, making it clear that “reality” can mean different things to different people.

As Suskind relates the story: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ ” …

… If empires can choose to create their own realities, why hasn’t Bush’s American Empire created a stable, more peaceful world? Why aren’t we safer than we were before 9/11? The neocons deluded themselves into imagining they could control reality, but in the end, aren’t they the ones who’ve just been mugged? But it’s not that simple.

In a very real sense, Suskind’s “senior Bush advisor” has been proved more right than wrong. The administration did create realities to match its darkest visions, reshaping the world with remarkable speed and thoroughness.

In 2001, administration stalwarts suggested that Osama bin Laden rivaled Hitler in the danger he posed to U.S. security and insisted that Al Qaeda’s power was so great that nothing short of a “global war on terror” was required.

At that time, most experts say, this description of Al Qaeda simply wasn’t true. It was little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they got lucky — but despite the unexpected success of their attack on the U.S., they did not pose an imminent mortal threat to the nation.

Today, things are different. Thanks to U.S. policies, Al Qaeda has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001. Our ham-handed detention and interrogation tactics and our ill-advised invasion of Iraq have alienated vast swathes of the Islamic world, fueling extremism and anti-Americanism. Today, Al Qaeda is no longer a single organization. Now it’s a franchise, with new gangs of terrorists around the world proudly seizing the “Al Qaeda” affiliation.

Other neocon fantasies have also come true. In 2003, there was no alliance between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and no Al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups in Iraq. Today, thanks to the administration’s actions, Iraq has become a prime training and recruiting ground for Al Qaeda, and the NIE has declared Al Qaeda in Iraq one of the greatest threats to U.S. peace and security.

Welcome to the neocons’ reality.

Suskind’s senior Bush aide was right all along. When an empire acts, it creates new realities — for better or for worse — and all the rest us are left to study those new realities. And, unfortunately, to live with them.

Be sure to read Michael Hirsch’s most recent Newsweek.com column, “Let’s Not Kid Ourselves.” I don’t think most of us are, actually. Unfortunately, those in charge of government are still living in La La Land.

Update: See also Glenn Greenwald —

Speaking of which, in a post almost immediately preceding Kudlow’s, Jonah Goldberg laid down his Lofty Principles of American Warfare: namely, we must favor democracy in the world because it “is morally preferable to tyranny”; our wars must keep in mind “America’s sense of decency”; “Americans want to feel good about their wars, particularly their wars of choice”; to beat terrorism, we need “something,” and “Our something must be freedom”; and when waging war, Americans “need to be reassured they are the good guys.”

And with these inspiring principals in mind, what does Jonah think we should now in Iraq?

    As a matter of analysis and prescription, I’m all in favor of the war in Iraq becoming less “liberal” — as you folks are using the term around here — and more realistic, i.e. ruthless. No fan of “liberalizing” Iraq can be against winning there first.

Absolutely. The problem we have in the Muslim world is that we have not been sufficiently “ruthless” in our wars. We need to make sure that we are the good guys and on the side of freedom and maintain our sense of decency. And to do this, we must — after four straight years of decimating that country — increase our ruthlessness.

Resistance

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The Guardian reports that Sunni insurgents in Iraq are forming a coalition to better resist the American occupation of their country. Seumas Milne writes,

Seven of the most important Sunni-led insurgent organisations fighting the US occupation in Iraq have agreed to form a public political alliance with the aim of preparing for negotiations in advance of an American withdrawal, their leaders have told the Guardian.

In their first interview with the western media since the US-British invasion of 2003, leaders of three of the insurgent groups – responsible for thousands of attacks against US and Iraqi armed forces and police – said they would continue their armed resistance until all foreign troops were withdrawn from Iraq, and denounced al-Qaida for sectarian killings and suicide bombings against civilians. …

… Leaders of the three groups, who did not use their real names in the interview, said the new front, which brings together the main Sunni-based armed organisations except al-Qaida and the Ba’athists, had agreed the main planks of a joint political programme, including a commitment to free Iraq from foreign troops, rejection of cooperation with parties involved in political institutions set up under the occupation and a declaration that decisions and agreements made by the US occupation and Iraqi government are null and void.

The aim of the alliance – which includes a range of Islamist and nationalist-leaning groups and is planned to be called the Political Office for the Iraqi Resistance – is to link up with other anti-occupation groups in Iraq to negotiate with the Americans in anticipation of an early US withdrawal. The programme envisages a temporary technocratic government to run the country during a transition period until free elections can be held.

I’d like to rub some rightie noses in this section:

Abd al-Rahman al-Zubeidy, political spokesman of Ansar al-Sunna, a salafist (purist Islamic) group with a particularly violent reputation in Iraq, said his organisation had split over relations with al-Qaida, whose members were mostly Iraqi, but its leaders largely foreigners.

“Resistance isn’t just about killing Americans without aims or goals. Our people have come to hate al-Qaida, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. We are against indiscriminate killing, fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy,” he said. He added: “A great gap has opened up between Sunni and Shia under the occupation and al-Qaida has contributed to that.”

Every time there’s a news story about Sunni or Shia militants badmouthing al Qaeda, righties celebrate that Iraqis support “our” struggle. No, they support “their” struggle, and “their” struggle is as much against us as it is against any other foreigners messing around in their country and killing their people.

One of the Sunnis said “Peaceful resistance will not end the occupation. The US made clear it intended to stay for many decades.” However, “Now it is a common view in the resistance that they will start to withdraw within a year. ” The perception that we really are fixin’ to leave (which would, alas, be a big surprise to President Bush) seems to have spurred the insurgents toward political organization.

Wayne White, of Washington’s Middle East Institute and a former expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group, said it was unclear, given the diversity within the Sunni Arab insurgency, what influence the new grouping would have on the ground.

He added: “This does reveal that despite the widening cooperation on the part of some Sunni Arab insurgent groups with US forces against al-Qaida in recent months, such cooperation could prove very shortlived if the US does not make clear that it has a credible exit strategy.

Now, if we had smart leadership who wanted to do the right thing by Iraq — and note that if we really did have such leadership we wouldn’t have gotten into this mess — that leadership might seize upon this development as part of an exit strategy. We might say here’s our proposed timetable for withdrawal; all we need from you is cooperation in reducing violence, and we’re outta here.

Juan Cole writes that Sunnis want constitutional changes before they will cooperate in a parliamentary re-alignment that would free Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from dependence on the Sadr block.

The Iraqi Accord Front, however, has not only not rushed to embrace the new alliance, but has threatened to call a vote of no confidence on al-Maliki itself. The Sunni Arab members of parliament generally feel betrayed that they entered the political process in December 2005 on promises that they would have the opportunity to revise the constitution (which they largely rejected). But no such opportunity seems forthcoming. Among their major objections is to the provision of the constitution allowing for the formation of new regional confederacies (i.e. a Shiite one in addition to the present Kurdish one.) The main proponent of this plan is the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, so that getting a stable alliance between it and the Sunni Arabs strikes me as a stretch.

Alissa Rubin of the New York Times reports that al Sadr is busy, too.

After months of lying low, the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has re-emerged with a shrewd strategy that reaches out to Iraqis on the street while distancing himself from the increasingly unpopular government.

Mr. Sadr and his political allies have largely disengaged from government, contributing to the political paralysis noted in a White House report last week. That outsider status has enhanced Mr. Sadr’s appeal to Iraqis, who consider politics less and less relevant to their daily lives.

This is giving me a headache.

Timothy Garton Ash writes at The Guardian blog page that Americans are waking up to the scale of the disaster in Iraq, and we want out.

So Iraq is over. But Iraq has not yet begun. Not yet begun in terms of the consequences for Iraq itself, the Middle East, the US’s own foreign policy and its reputation in the world. The most probable consequence of rapid US withdrawal from Iraq in its present condition is a further bloodbath, with even larger refugee flows and the effective dismemberment of the country. Already some 2 million Iraqis have fled across the borders and more than 2 million are internally displaced. Now a pained and painstaking study from the Brookings Institution argues that what its authors call “soft partition”, involving the peaceful, voluntary transfer of an estimated 2 to 5 million Iraqis into distinct Kurdish, Sunni and Shia regions, under close US military supervision, would be the lesser evil. The lesser evil, that is, assuming that all goes according to plan and that the American public is prepared to allow the troops to stay in sufficient numbers to accomplish that thankless job – two implausible assumptions. A greater evil is more likely.

In an article for the web magazine Open Democracy, the Middle East specialist Fred Halliday spells out some regional consequences. Beside the effective destruction of the Iraqi state, these include the revitalising of militant Islamism and enhancement of the international appeal of the al-Qaida brand; the eruption for the first time in modern history of internecine war between Sunni and Shia – “a trend that reverberates in other states of mixed confessional composition”; the alienation of most sectors of Turkish politics from the west, and the stimulation of authoritarian nationalism there; the strengthening of a nuclear-hungry Iran; and a new regional rivalry, pitting the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies, including Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas, against Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

For the US itself, the world is now, as a result of the Iraq war, a more dangerous and hostile place. At the end of 2002, what is sometimes tagged al-Qaida Central in Afghanistan had been virtually destroyed and there was no al-Qaida in Iraq. In 2007, there is an al-Qaida in Iraq; parts of the old al-Qaida are creeping back into Afghanistan; and there are al-Qaida emulator groupuscules spawning elsewhere, notably in Europe. Osama bin Laden’s plan was to get the US to overreact and over-reach itself. With the invasion of Iraq, President Bush fell slap-bang into that trap. The US government’s own latest national intelligence estimate, released earlier this week, suggests that al-Qaida in Iraq is now among the most significant threats to the security of the American homeland.

About that National Intelligence Estimate — Sidney Blumenthal writes,

At his July 12 press conference, Bush elevated al-Qaida to enemy No. 1 in Iraq and mentioned it 31 times, asserting that not supporting his policy would lead to “surrendering the future of Iraq to al-Qaida.” Asked about the soon to be released National Intelligence Estimate on al-Qaida, Bush claimed it would state, “There is a perception in the coverage that al Qaeda may be as strong today as they were prior to September the 11th. That’s just simply not the case.”

One day later, on July 13, Bush held a meeting at the White House for a small group of conservative pundits, giving them a glimpse into his state of mind. David Brooks of the New York Times described his “self-confidence.” Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard quoted him saying, “I’m optimistic,” even though he also said, “I understand the polls. This is an unpopular war!” At his press conference, Bush had said, “There is a war fatigue in America.” And he pointed to his head. “It’s affecting our psychology.” During his meeting with the conservative writers, he mocked his critics. Kate O’Beirne and Rich Lowry of the National Review quoted him as saying: “How can he possibly do this? Can’t he see? Can’t he hear?” The son of a president explained that no one could really understand what it meant to be president. “You don’t know what it’s like to be commander in chief until you’re commander in chief,” he said, according to participants. His critics could not possibly understand him. But he was obviously peeved. Washington, he complained, was filled with “a lot of talkers.” Yet Bush pledged, unbidden, that he would not listen to these critics. “I’m not on the phone chatting up with these people writing these articles, ascribing motives to me.” Such are the reflections of the so-called self-confident president.

On Tuesday, the executive summary of the new NIE on al-Qaida was made public. But it did not fit the administration’s marketing campaign. Al-Qaida, the report stated, has “protected or regenerated” itself in the northern provinces of Pakistan. It also said that the terrorist group would “probably leverage” its contacts with the group known as al-Qaida in Iraq, an “affiliate,” and “the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland.”

The next day, Wednesday, the U.S. military made a timely announcement of the capture of Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a courier for al-Qaida in Iraq. After two weeks in detention, he confessed to hand delivering messages from al-Qaida leaders Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, suggesting that the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques vociferously defended by the administration indeed work.

The latest NIE, however, is a strange product. According to highly reliable sources in the intelligence community, no new intelligence at all is reflected in the NIE. Its conclusions, on one level, are a rehash of obvious facts that anyone who reads a daily newspaper could glean, such as the protected status of al-Qaida in frontier regions of Pakistan. Other conclusions lack contextual analysis, partly because of the continuing pressure from the administration to politicize information and cherry-pick intelligence. The NIE, for example, does not explain that al-Qaida in Iraq, while lethal, is a very small part of the Sunni insurgency, and that a number of Sunni insurgent groups are its sworn enemies. Nor did the NIE note how few foreign fighters are in Iraq and what a small percentage of insurgents they constitute. (A Los Angeles Times story published on July 15 reported that of the 19,000 Iraqi prisoners held by the U.S. military there, only 135 are foreign fighters, and nearly half are Saudis.) The NIE is utterly devoid of political analysis.

According to intelligence sources, CIA director Michael Hayden has been under attack within the administration from Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives since testifying frankly to the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group that urged a strategic redeployment of U.S. forces and new diplomatic efforts in the region, which were rejected by President Bush. A virtual paralysis is setting in within the intelligence community. Analysts are even anxious about putting their names on their reports. While they are homogenizing information, the administration is still unhappy with the result, as it was with the new NIE.

For the embattled president, filled with “self-confidence,” the “motives” he doesn’t wish critics to examine turn out to be far more utopian than the military success of the surge, as he explained to his conservative interlocutors. “There is such a thing as the universality of freedom. I strongly believe that Muslims desire to be free just like Methodists desire to be free.” Beneath the seething chaotic violence, beyond the tribal and religious strife, past the civil war, the Iraqis, according to the president, under their robes are no different from American Methodists. There’s nothing more to understand. If only we can prevail, they can be just like us. The rest is marketing.

And speaking of Rich Lowry — he actually wrote something sensible about this. No, really. I was stunned. He wrote,

Bush believes the spread of liberty is “inevitable.” If that is the case, why not spare ourselves all the effort and let the inevitable flowering of liberty take hold?

I am no Middle East expert. Maybe the Iraqis could work things out, somehow, if we just got out of the way. Or maybe there will be a bloodbath when we leave, as Timothy Garton Ash. The only certainty is that President Bush is utterly out of control and utterly incapable of managing the situation in Iraq.

From an editorial in today’s New York Times:

The nation’s anguish over the Iraq war was kept on hold in the Senate yesterday as the Republican minority maintained serial threats of filibuster to buy time for President Bush’s aimless policies. Last week, the House debated and voted along party lines for a timetable for an American troop withdrawal by next spring. But a similar measure was allowed no such decisive expression in the Senate. Instead, the G.O.P. insisted on the approval of a “supermajority” of 60 of 100 senators before putting to a vote a measure that would apply real pressure on the president to shift his disastrous course in Iraq.

Republicans have the right to filibuster under centuries-old rules that this page has long defended. It is the height of hypocrisy for this band of Republicans to use that power since only about two years ago they were ready to unilaterally ban filibusters to push through some of Mr. Bush’s most ideologically blinkered judicial nominees.

But beyond that, the Republicans are doing the public a real disservice and playing an increasingly risky hand by delaying sober consideration of the war. The filibuster threat on Iraq also is part of a broader Republican tactic of demanding supermajorities on a raft of major issues in the hopes of paralyzing the Senate and then painting the Democrats as a do-nothing, marginal majority.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tested the opposition’s stated appetite for unhampered debate by staging an all-nighter Tuesday replete with cots and pizzas. A measure containing a withdrawal timetable failed to get the 60 votes it needed, but it did draw a 52-vote majority, including four Republicans, that amounted to more handwriting on the wall for Bush loyalists. A year ago, a nonbinding withdrawal measure drew 39 votes. The tide is shifting, even if the White House and its Republican backers won’t recognize it. …

… In postponing real action to September and beyond, Republicans laughed off the all-night debate as a “slumber party” of “twilight zone” theatrics by the Democrats. In fact, Bush loyalists seem trapped in the twilight zone, ducking their responsibility to represent constituents by applying credible pressure on the president to come up with an end to his sorry war.

Arlington West

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I just returned from a walk on the beach (aahhhhhhhh…) and visited our nearby Iraq War memorial, Arlington West. Every Sunday, volunteers (mostly from Veterans For Peace) create a temporary memorial, consisting of a cross planted in the sand for each fallen US soldier in Iraq. They’ve been doing this for 3.5 years, starting back when the death toll was at 500. Loved ones often come by to donate various mementos, ranging from newspaper clippings or handwritten notes from girlfriends or wives, or even objects like a can of Heineken – these dramatically personalize the memorial and are dutifully displayed each Sunday, next to the soldier’s cross.

Arlington West has grown to a pretty big affair, with flag draped caskets, various displays of photos and literature as well as T-shirts and DVDs, and fresh flowers.The city of Santa Monica actually provides storage for these materials during the week. The memorial is immediately next to a major tourist attraction (Santa Monica pier) and so is seen by loads of people from all over. It’s also been the subject of a movie of the same name, Arlington West, which was made as an anti-recruitment film, and which I’m told has been very effective at dissuading young people from signing up.(I still remember an anecdote about this, where the film was shown in a packed high school gym, and there was complete, and utter silence when it finished – if you can imagine this).

I have found this memorial to be at least as emotionally moving as the VietNam war memorial in DC. It’s especially moving to me, to watch dozens of visitors, standing overhead on the pier (which has an amusement park atmosphere), in kind of an impromptu viewing gallery, surveying the memorial, and choking up. We are so deliberately shielded from the reality of this war. A couple of prominent signs are oriented toward this viewing gallery and simply explain, in English and Spanish:

Each cross represents an American soldier killed in Iraq

If we were to acknowledge the number of Iraqi deaths, the crosses would fill this entire beach