What About Iraq?

In his NYT op-ed column on June 18th, Thomas Friedman writes:

"Iraq has become one of those subjects that so many people now come to with so much emotional scar tissue that it is very hard to have a sober discussion about the actual situation there today. So much is colored by how you feel about George Bush or whether you were for or against the war. As a result, what we do next in Iraq — how and why — is barely getting discussed in the presidential campaign."

According to a CNN report from late last month:

Notable progress" has been made in Iraq despite persistent problems, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday at an international summit to promote peace in the violence-wracked country.

"If we were asked to use just one word to describe the situation in Iraq today, I would choose the word 'hope,' " Ban said at the Stockholm, Sweden, conference. "Iraq is stepping back from the abyss that we feared most."

Yet Iraqis continue to suffer from terrorism, sectarian violence and criminality, he said, and "essential services are still sorely lacking.

Forced displacement and human-rights violations remain problems, particularly for women and minorities, he said, but the level of violence has declined from that of 2006 and part of 2007.

"There is new hope that the people and government of Iraq are overcoming daunting challenges and working together to rebuild their country after years of war, neglect and dictatorship," Ban said.

Confusing leadership in the United States has been a problem since the war began. American citizens were asked to sacrifice nothing. Life went on in this nation as if nothing was happening of any great significance on foreign soil. Public protests and critics of the Bush administration's rush to war were either ignored or buried in the back pages of American newspapers. There was enough guilt to go around. Factors involving mainstream media, certain bloggers willing to sacrifice truth and reality to score cheap political points, extreme partisanship and fear-mongering in the halls of Washington, D.C, the discouraging rubber-stamps and roadblocks from so many Republican Senators and House Representatives...each played a part in the emotional scarring that Mr. Friedman, whose own judgment disappointed me many times over the past few years, now humbly talks about.

None of it was a U.S. soldier's doing nor was any mistake a soldier's fault.

There has been a disturbing lack of leadership at the very top - from those in the U.S. Executive branch who were charged with solemn responcibilities to the American people and who failed miserably. For these past five excruciating years during which our soldiers have sacrificed life and limb in Iraq, the Bush administration - often adamantly - failed at every step to reasonably explain to the American public what victory might look like when it was achieved. Seeing them making excuses and moving the "victory" goalposts at every convenient political juncture for the sake of empowering one political party is, for me, unforgivable.

Why did the Bush administration take the American public for fools?
Didn't they realize that you can only fool the people for so long?

Bottom line, Mr. Friedman is right.

It's high time Americans got a glimpse of the reality on the ground in Iraq and it's high time our leaders trusted and respected the intelligence of each and every American and start talking about Iraq in a way that intelligent people can actually understand. President Bush has appealed to the pariotism in each of us in a disrespectful manner in that he's asked us citizens to take too much on faith alone. This isn't a church. It's a nation of people who, from the time of our nation's founding, has existed on the basis of each soul having an opportunity to make crucial and informed choices. As Robert McClure, Senior Associate Dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University said in 2001 about being an intelligent patriot:

"If democratic citizenship involves both rights and responsibilities, then patriotism is found on the responsibility side of the equation. Patriotism is a citizen’s duty—a debt owed—to the larger community, ….not an individual prerogative reserved for personal use. In a democracy, patriotism is part of our responsibility to protect and defend one another, because — if for no other reason than the most self-interested of reasons — it is the national community that bestows and protects our individual rights."

In my own activism, I've acted because I owe a debt to the soldiers who've taken and followed the command of their Commander-in-Chief on faith and in loyalty to the larger American community and the U.S. Constitution. A quote was on my blog's sidebar from the time the Iraq war began: "This blog, out of love and respect for our citizens who serve in the armed forces, supports the brave men and women who do their duty for this nation. This blog does not support the current policies of G.W. Bush. May Providence grant us all the wisdom to know the difference. "



AP photo from March, 2004 - Yes, that's our President George Bush mockingly looking for WMD under his desk. The old joke has gone rancid. He doesn't seem to know it yet.

Iraq is more than just a mess that our poor and deceptive leaders got us into. And it certainly isn't a joke.

I was floored to learn, thanks to Dan Froomkin, that, even after being criticized for other times he's done it, President Bush still considers the absence of WMD in Iraq as some kind of a joke:

"...in an interview [today] with Ned Temko of Britain's Observer, [President] Bush actually joked that he was "still looking" for the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were the main reason he gave to the public for going to war.

I believe that Barack Obama and John McCain are going to have to talk about the gains achieved because of the surge in Iraq. I want to hear no political posturing from either side because, after shock and awe in 2003, there was a four-year blunder of historic proportions and Obama's claim to having been against the war from Day One, although noble in its own light of judgment, doesn't really matter anymore, to be quite honest. We are where we are. John McCain should take no great pride in having championed this war, voting with the Republicans for the four years for which his party can only claim a wrong course of action in U.S. Foreign policy. Fast-forward to "the surge" and some gains can be claimed...but for how long? Is maintaining the few gains achieved in the past eight months considered to be what victory looks like as we amble toward an end game (still with no time-frames in legislation)? Are those gains enough? We know, from experience, that whenever we've left a city like Mosul or Basra or Fallujah, we've left a vacuum for militia groups and oil smugglers to fill. If we pull our soldiers out one brigade at a time, how long will it take for the vacuum caused by their leaving to be filled with those who would cause the Iraq government to lose a grip on their fragile situation?

How long do we keep this up?

I am expecting to see a meaningful and respectful debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. Anything less will surely disappoint.

Zogby Urges Return to Iraq Study Group Recommendations

Dr. James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, DC, believes that the war in Iraq is far from over - and may soon get worse. He says it could and should have been foreseen. All the warning signs were there. In Northern Iraq, the file of historical grievances of the Kurdish people has been opened and it won't close anytime soon.

Over the past decade, Iraq's Kurds have prospered under a US-protected umbrella. With the collapse of the regime in Baghdad, Kurdish hopes of expanding their autonomy grew, and with it, their ambition as well. The Kurdish Provisional Authority (KPA) has become, for all intents and purposes, a state within a failing state. With its own flag and military, and its own Washington representation, the KPA is moving inexorably towards independence.

When Dr. Zogby refers to the KPA's "own Washington representation," this story (from the WaPo) is a good part of what he's talking about. I have written [in 2005, in 2006, in 2007] about my deep concerns about the conflict of ethics and interest when well-paid K-Street lobbyists become de-facto U.S. diplomats in war-torn regions. It's akin to letting Blackwater fight our nation's wars. It's against every democratic principle intended by the Founding Fathers to keep our Republic from falling into a state of corruption and oligarchy.

Dr. Zogby revisits the Iraq Study Group recommendations, surely making neoconservatives shiver as he invokes the name of their Straussian devil known as the U.N. This idea acknowledges an interdependent world, but threatens the hijack-hold the neocons still have on U.S. foreign policy, thanks to the Presient's delusions of one-day historic greatness, and the intellectual shortcomings and raw partisan ambitions of the Bush administration and the U.S. Republican party:

With Turkey and Iran both bombing Kurdish positions within the KPA and threatening an even greater response if the insurgent groups are not controlled, the US sees the possibility that its one Iraqi success story may give way to the opening of a new front in what will become an even more complicated war.


This all should have been understood before the war began, but was not. And that is why one of the principal recommendations of the Iraq Study Group is as valid today as when it was written. And that is the necessity of creating a regional security pact to bring together all the component groups inside Iraq, along with Iraq's neighbours, under the auspices of the UN, so that problems of this sort are not tackled piece meal. Iraq's neighbours have a direct stake in the stability and unity of Iraq and are better made partners towards that goal than a collection of allies and rivals.

There is a new framework from which the UN could be instrumental in resolving the Kurdish question. Recently passed (without a 'YES' vote from the United States) was the Human Rights Council Resolution on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [pdf]. It's a declaration that could give indigenous peoples like the Kurds a valuable tool even though, still imperfect, the agreement’s non-binding nature leaves indigenous peoples to rely upon the political will of nation states as each respective state creates a framework for working with their indigenous populations. A great leader would take Dr. Zogby's advice and go back to the Iraq Study Group recommendations and implement the new UN Declaration framework in a way that would bring an end to U.S. occupationand bring peace to the region and fairness to the Kurds by involving and placing responsibility with all of Iraq's neighbors.

Regional Conference w/Iran: Please Don't Let it Be Bolton

Two points taken from today's guest blogpost at Informed Comment by Gerald B. Helman, who was United States Ambassador to the European Office of the United Nations from 1979 through 1981. The first is included in the content above the fold and is in regard to the upcoming regional conference with Iran and it underscores what many of us - sadly - have already come to realize about the Bush administration.

"The Conference may also offer the US an opportunity over the longer run to establish and institutionalize a more stable security environment in the region, with the US and its forces a continuing and accepted element. The Administration could make preparation of positions for the conference a truely bipartisan effort and even propose some level of Congressional participation. Regretably, this Administration lacks the imagination, courage and time to bring that about."

The second is a rumor from below the fold. A commenter asks if there's any truth to the rumor that former UN Ambassador John Bolton will be appointed the American representative for this regional conference. If it's true, I believe it would be an accurate predictor of the expected (non) results of the regionl conference as made in the first point by Dr. Helman above.

In a recent National Interest article [subsc req] titled UN, Rediscovered, Derek Chollet makes the astute observation:

In many ways personnel is destiny, and the new faces could move the relationship from an era of bitterness, suspicion and isolation to one of sustained, positive engagement and realistic expectations.

If personnel is destiny and Bolton is put in charge, I don't think I'd have to spell out the end of the story for you. After too many years of Bolton's stormy history, you're smart enough to figure it out for yourself.