as we may blog

Fred Kaplan’s excellent article in Slate identifies the American military’s current quandary in Iraq and proposes a few ideas for securing the peace. His outlook is bleak.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military—the only force in Iraq remotely capable of keeping the country from falling apart—finds itself in a maddening situation where tactical victories yield strategic setbacks. The Marines could readily defeat the insurgents in Najaf, but only at the great risk of inflaming Shiites—and sparking still larger insurgencies—elsewhere.

So in a climate in which each military victory like the one witnessed at Najaf is a strategic defeat in the larger war to win hearts and minds, how exactly does the U.S. win? Kaplan readily acknowledges his suggestions—which include dividing Iraq into a loose three-state federation or providing nations like France and Russia lucrative oil contract incentives to join in securing the peace—are likely to fail. Read the article for a full accounting of his ideas, it’s not that long.

The article got me thinking about American electoral politics. There was a lengthy and entertaining argument on [hdjunk] recently that wasn’t about any one subject in particular but managed to bring out a lot of Bush-hate and second-guessing about Iraq (the Blogbot editorial staff, not surprisingly, was not above it all). Toward the end of the argument, the Bush haters were challenged to provide reasons why they endorsed John Kerry. Frank offered a very cogent summary of why he supports Kerry (a summary so cogent it ended the conversation, unfortunately). Under bullet point #3, "Education and Reasoning," Frank had this to say:

I think Kerry is a more organized thinker judging from his public appearances and speeches. I place value on this personally, but i can understand someone else might prefer someone who relies on faith or instinct more.

So after thinking of Kaplan’s article in terms of election year politics, I thought of this point of Frank’s. I acknowledge that in the end neither Bush nor Kerry may be able to secure the peace in Iraq; it really isn’t one man’s responsibility to so, so when I speak of "Bush" or "Kerry" I’m really speaking of the cumulative work of their staffs and the foreign policy ideologies that guide these officials. The U.S. military faces what appears to be an intractable situation in Iraq. Unless one looks to rough comparisons like V*****m or the low-grade proxy warfare the U.S. waged in Latin America in the 70s and 80s, there really is little historical precedent for how to accomplish what the U.S. needs to accomplish in Iraq.

The question for me, then, is which politician is more equipped to think of new solutions for this problem? I see very little in the way of non-traditional or creative thought from the Bush administration in working to end this conflict. I see an administration equipped to think about and prosecute a war in very traditional, undebateable terms. Kerry has indicated a willingness to work outside of the Bush administration’s self-imposed boundaries, by re-establishing foreign alliances. Quite frankly, that’s not nearly enough. But it’s a start. Faith and instinct got us into this war, but only organized, creative thinking will get the U.S. and the Iraqi people out of it now. John Kerry is more likely to provide that quality of leadership.

…he’s just like the old boss. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

… But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister’s personal security team watched in stunned silence.

The Herald published this story about an hour ago. It will be interesting to see if other major news outlets pick it up.

For the last year or two, the New York Times has had the dubious distinction of being one of the only daily U. S. newspapers in which you could find some of the best journalism right alongside some of the shoddiest. In either instance, the Times‘ ability to affect what stories get what type of coverage is huge. Today they say they’re sorry for such terrible investigative journalism in the leadup to war in Iraq:

On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.

Oops! Independent verification rears its ugly head again. What a bitch. It’s easy to be flip, but in this case it’s probably not appropriate given the gravity of the situation in Iraq. I don’t think it’s too large of a reach to say that if a handful of prominent newspapers had critically and skeptically analyzed this administration’s claims for war in Iraq, things could be much, much different today. We’ll never know. But admissions like the Times‘ today indicate that things could and should have been done differently. Kos puts it best, I think:

I spoke at a media conference a few months ago, where scandalized Big Media execs and journalism professors expressed outrage that people would read the blogs. "How –" they asked, "Can readers trust what they read in the blogs?" Didn’t the public know they needed media execs to filter out the news from the chaffe?

I launched into one of my tirades –

"How can you claim to be the rightful gatekeepers of news when you have failed the American public so fully? You feed them Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Martha Stewart, and every single WMD lie the administration has fed you, with nary an attempt to learn the truth. And we are supposed to trust you? You’ve had your chance. You failed."

Perhaps the scandal-a-minute reporting we’re seeing today is an attempt by Big Media to atone for the journalistic sins of two years ago. Or perhaps this administration just leaks a scandal a minute. Either is a plausible explanation.

Developing scandal threatens to make current scandal old hat

The Guardian reports Iranian intelligence used Ahmed Chalabi as the bow to play the US like a fiddle:

An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.

Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.

GOP chairman Ed Gillespie: "Shiv Nadar!"

The Hindustan Times (always on to my bedside stand, under Robert’s Rules of Order, of course) reports the oh-so-embarassing details of the RNC outsourcing some of its fundraising calls in 2002-03:

For 14 months between May 16, 2002 and July 22, 2003, HCL BPO Services ? the 100 per cent-owned subsidiary of Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Technologies ? had some 125 agents working in seven teams soliciting financial contributions for the Republican Party. US presidential elections are slated for November 2004.

Fat people irked with soft rocker

It appears poet laureate Jewel, heiress to the Jewel/Osco fortune, turned in a controversial performance at the Hampton Beach Ballroom Casino. Via Can’t Stop the Bleeding via someone named Brian Turner:

HAMPTON - Gloria Dion wants her money back after being subjected to what she calls the worst Jewel concert ever.

… "People were literally walking out of the show," she said. "As soon as she came out, she began to insult us. We thought she was joking at first because it was kind of weird."

Witnesses said Jewel went on a tirade of insults from poking fun at fat people to others with no teeth. At one point, she asked the audience to yell requests and then told them to "shut the hell up."

"I saw her live in Boston and it was the greatest show I?ve ever been to," Dion said. "I don?t know if she was having a nervous breakdown or what. She told everyone to stop looking at her teeth and look at her breasts."

CNN reports that the CIA believes high-ranking terrorist Abu Masab al-Zarqawi himself beheaded Nick Berg. Why is this notable? Because the U.S. had several opportunities to kill Zarqawi before the war in Iraq and George Bush refused to do so as it would’ve undermined his flimsy case for war.

"Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn?t do it," said Michael O?Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

"People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president?s policy of preemption against terrorists," according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

Tom Friedman’s op-ed in today’s Times hits the war-as-political-ploy nail right on its crooked head and realizes that he’s been had by the Bush administration:

I admit, I’m a little slow. Because I tried to think about something as deadly serious as Iraq, and the post- 9/11 world, in a nonpartisan fashion ? as Joe Biden, John McCain and Dick Lugar did ? I assumed the Bush officials were doing the same. I was wrong. They were always so slow to change course because confronting their mistakes didn’t just involve confronting reality, but their own politics.

Kevin Drum has similar feelings.