Warning! ™violation Warning!
Red Scare is the property of Eurasian Romantic Idealism, Int. And is the province of the Democrat Party (Mr. {T.} Woodrow Wilson & Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer introduced this Progressive Product into Our Commercial Republic).Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon
Last edited by Virgil K. Saari; 03-24-2008 at 06:57 PM.
If anything, we liberals gave up the "social guilt card" on 9/11. We took it back after we found that the President lied about WMDs to start a war and exposures of abused prisoners made the news. Dubya picked up that card and threw it back at us.
In fact, the so-called "social guilt card" is best described with the words "conscience" and "responsibility". Nobody says that Saddam Hussein wouldn't have misbehaved... but if he did, perhaps with his agents being caught trying to buy yellowcake from FBI agents posing as members of the Russian Mafia, then liberals in charge -- were they in charge -- would have waged a war against him with conscience and responsibility. There wouldn't be any photos of naked prisoners (except for dog collars) moving about on all fours with some American "soldier" connected with a dog leash. That stuff isn't inevitable with a conservative Administration; it didn't happen under Dubya's father in Iraq or Panama or under Reagan in Grenada.
Dubya thrust the "social guilt card" back into our hands... and it now gives us a strong hand -- an ethical full house (three threes and two kings) to his undistinguished hand (a pair of 2's and a 4-5-6, one of the 2's and the others clubs).
He's going to need a bigger full house (lots of luck!), four of a kind (even harder). An inside straight is a risky play, but that will be impossible for him; we liberals have the 3 of clubs.
To you, yours and to me, mine. Over the decades, there has been so much to go around.Red Scare is the property of Eurasian Romantic Idealism, Int. And is the province of the Democrat Party (Mr. {T.} Woodrow Wilson & Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer introduced this Progressive Product into Our Commercial Republic).
Now that it is nearly gone, we must resort to demagoguery of the Muslims. I doubt that will satisfy in the same way.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Obviously, you don't equate economic output with ability to pay the bills or meeting the liberals social obligations. OK, a bunch of planes fly into two economic hubs, a military command structure, air travel gets shut down for a week and the stock market is forced to close it doors for a week. What would you have suggested? I assume your response would have been, lets just all take a week off from life, get high, get laid and totally ignore the visions of devastation and carnage. I dunno, at the time, his comments made perfect sense to me.
I think there's a viable alternative to raising taxes on Americans. I see no reason to act or talk like some dead old liberal from the past, in the face of a relatively small challenge to American power and resolve. My views, for the most part, reflect a compassion for those who are socially or economically trapped or entangled in the liberal Democrats economic state or frame of thought, so to speak.
Mk I I
The Red Scare II® is also a Democrat Intl. Product in the main, coming from the finely Prendergast machine tooling of "That Man's" replacement, the haberdasher, and the mills of HUAC (run by the able Hon. Ed. Hart, the Hon. John S. Wood, and the Hon. Frances E. Walter--albeit with two brief hostile takeovers by others).
Note that the first edition was ante-articulus (Unravelling) and the second was post-articulus (High). During the Crisis, it was a time for fellow-travelling with ruddy "Liberals-in-a-Hurry".
We might be Muslim-matey in the Coming Crisis and then return to Islamic scariness in the next High (perhaps as the Celestials are brought down to earth).
Last edited by Virgil K. Saari; 03-24-2008 at 09:41 PM.
It's odd that you suggest that the great benefit of GWB being who he was and where he was is his focus and lack of sloth. At least I assume you're trying to make that point with the comment about taking a week of life. The only problem is, i made the exact opposite point. The lack of seriouslness was evident from the first GWB action. He parlayed a massive tragedy into a commercial for our sainted retail industry, "may the blessings of mammon be upon them".
After that, it really went down hill.
That's totally incoherent. Right now ... today ... there is no liberal agenda standing in the way of American power, yet American power is on the brink of collapse. Why? Because we insisted on doing something incredibily stupid, doing it the most expensive possible way, and doing it all on credit. Consider that no one fights a war by allowing war profiteering, but GWB no only allowed it, he actually encouraged it.
So how do you pay for all this? Are you planning on running the printing presses until our money is worth less than toilet paper?
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
It's hard to picture those fighting for corporate America against the dirty Commies as being Progressives, but there were certainly members of both parties involved, so from that perspective, the stain touched the entire government.
I suspect that the Muslim of tomorrow may very well be treated to a similar fate.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Once again, I ask the simple question, why would Bush lie to screw himself? The way I see it, liberal Democrats basically own the "social guilt card". I've never met a liberal Democrat in person who didn't try to pull it out or use it to their advantage.
Another Lefty Lie
"If [Bush] had asked the average American to sacrifice at all, the justification for going to war would have been examined much more thoroughly and found to be utterly worthless. (Remember, even with all the media cheerleading, on the eve of the invasion less than 50% of the public supported Bush's war.) So he had to pretend it wouldn't cost anything."Scares, "Red" or otherwise, are induced by the willingness of some to believe and spread lies. This post is a perfect example of how it works. The poster posits a simple lie, that "on the eve of the invasion less than 50% of the public supported Bush's war." And, then, draws a conclusion -- Bush sucks -- based upon the lie. It works wonderfully simply because, 1) human memory is typically short, and 2) because the post "invasion" has failed to live up to expectations (yes, Bush failed), then most folks are now siding with Obama (who opposed the invasion).
Fact is, over 70% of Americans supported the Iraq "invasion" on the "eve" of it's brilliant execution. But the slow drip, drip of determined lies and outright obfuscation has trumped the truth with a myth.
Of course history is yet to play it's ultimate trump cards, of which may/may not trump the present (Bush sucks) myth, so eagerly embraced and promoted by our myth-making poster. Duh... But such is the idiotic partisan hackery that has come to dominate this "history" website.
No surprise there. But it is kinda sad. www.fourthturning.com ought to be something more than just another Democrat Party website.
Ah, I've drawn the horrible accusation of "lefty" from Marc, although he is apparently unwilling to actually credit my post. I'll take that as a compliment.
Unfortunately for him, this "lefty" actually has a long memory. Note my specific formulation: "less than 50% supported Bush's war." I had in mind this CBS poll taken in Feb 2003, which I recall clearly because of its insight into the internal contradictions of the average American. In this poll, we find the following numbers:
66% "approve of military force to remove Saddam Hussein"
but also in the very same sample
only 56% say "removing Saddam Hussein is a good enough reason to go to war"
only 47% approve of military action if "it involves the US military for months or years"
only 46% approve if "it involves significant Iraqi civilian casualties"
and
63% say "we should wait for US allies' backing before attacking Iraq"
56% say "we should wait for UN approval"
59% say "we should give UN inspectors more time"
Similar results are found in the poll that Marc cites. The poll question is:
"The Bush administration says it will move soon to disarm Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power, by war if necessary, working with countries that are willing to assist, even without the support of the United Nations. Overall, do you support or oppose this policy? (IF SUPPORT) Do you support it with reservations or without reservations?
Results:
Support without reservations 34%
Support with reservations 24%
Oppose 37%
So the conclusion I must draw is that while a majority of Americans were willing to trust Bush's assertion about the minimal cost of the war, a majority still had serious doubts about his course of action.
Oh, and I didn't say anything like "Bush sucks"; that is left as an exercise for the reader.
Yes we did!
My point was, under the circumstances known at the time, the Bush comment about shopping made sense. Hey, I didn't vote for eventual economic dependency on the 'MAN' during the 1960's. Funny, I get the impression from reading liberal posts, the war is standing in the way of the liberals social agenda.
This will be my last reply on this topic, since we have now passed the break-even point, and are accumulating a negative ROI on my time. Think for a minute. Why is destroying the country a suitable method for preventing "the liberal social agenda"? I assume you have a reason.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Bush Sucks
A lot of us do view history through various filters and prisms. I see a transition from Agricultural Age to Industrial Age to perhaps an Information Age pattern. S&H's crises mark the major transitions along this path. Mr. Saari views modern progress through the filter of mostly forgotten mediaeval heresies, attributing Agricultural Age motivations to modern humans with entirely different values.
And you seem obsessed with the phrase 'Bush Sucks,' and seem only able to comment on anything except to the extent that it proves or disproves that hypothesis.
And, yes, many posters here hold variations of modern Blue American values, with relatively few Reds hanging in there. Yes, more variety would be nice. Yes, a bit more time tying modern Blue or Red values to various abstract historical theories would be cool.
This this site wasn't always Blue dominant. Around the turn of the millennium, the Reds were more common, and many of them were quite pleased that the Blue Clinton 42 era of compromise, lose morals and wishy washy international coalition building was over. The coming of a more militant decisive leadership in both Washington and Tel Aviv would end the drift of the unraveling, bringing on the decisive transformation and problem resolution of a crisis era.
Eight years later, it is possible to ask if Bush 43 was the answer, or a personification of the problem. Is he an early leader of this crisis setting a pattern to be followed, a pattern of deficit spending, preemptive unilateral invasions, abandoning allies, making enemies, burning fossil fuels and ignoring the environment? Did the Bush 43 era illuminate the correct answers to this crisis?
Or is he the tail end of the Goldwater - Nixon - Reagan - Bush - Bush era of Republican politics, as Carter was the end of the FDR - JFK - LBJ - Carter era. As an era ends, the tail end charley who attempted to extend policies beyond their time generally is perceived of as sucking. I'd suggest Buchanan, Hoover, Carter and Bush 43 are of the same mold. Before a new set of political values can surface, the old ones must visibly and conspicuously fail. Whomever was in charge as the values fail is not remembered well. Frankly, most think such leaders suck.
It is not absolutely clear to me that Bush 43 will be the tail end charley of this unravelling. Fill_in_the_blank 44 will get his fair shot at failure too. Still, the one thing one might learn from The Theory is that cultures transform in the crisis. We are due to transform. Business as usual should not be anticipated.
Which is likely part of why we are lacking Red advocates. Red advocates have to create myths that everything is fine, and do stuff like lying about old poll results. They are trying to pretend all is right with the world, and the status quo of the unravelling pattern can and should continue. They have to pretend the wheels are not falling off, or assert that the vehicle is quite capable of flying off the cliff quite well, thank you, without wheels. Wings? Who wants to talk about a need for wings?
Taxation without representation sucked. Slavery sucked. The Great Depression sucked. Tojo, Hitler and Mussolini sucked. As one goes into a 3T 4T cusp, things suck. I would prefer if we were focused on issues, not an individual. With everyone focused on an individual, there is less time being spent talking about how to solve the problems. Alas, this crisis doesn't yet have a single clearly defined issue. It is a knot of interacting problems - ecological, military, economic, ethnic, political, scientific, and religious - with no single aspect dominant. Solving any one problem won't solve the rest. A comprehensive approach attacking all together is required. Thus, there is no sound byte sized easy solution that everyone can rally around. Thus, we have a phony crisis. Problems are amorphous, and solutions are hard to come by.
Which is why I'm not pleased at your constant efforts to distract the conversation away from issues towards perpetual discussions on whether Bush sucks. I guess everyone is entitled to a world view, to a perspective on how to view our times. Mixing ages of civilization with S&H cycles works for me. Bush sucking seems to be your central principle upon which all else in the world resolves. No matter what the subject under discussion, Bush sucking is the subject under discussion.
I just can't share your obsession. I would think there would be more constructive ways to promote Red values than obsessing on Bush 43. I'd think you would want to put him behind you and focus on how to salvage various aspects of the Goldwater - Nixon - Reagan - Bush 41 tradition. Is that era truly dead, or can the core principles be salvaged to solve the crisis? I think that era is best buried, that we had best move on, as is proper in a 4T, but the forum does need people who can put a positive spin on Red values. Putting a negative spin on Blue values won't be enough anymore. Like it or not, the 3T is ending.
I suggest you think for a minute. Why is destroying the future of one country and risking the future of our country, a suitable method for advancing "the liberal social agenda"?
Bob, we have two sets of blue values being represented in the 4T. I represent one set of the two sets of blue values.
I'm a purple. A mixture of traditional blue values (the triumphant values of the Cival War and World War II on an even greater stage) and traditional red values (one wife vs several wives, marriage remains defined as the union of one man and one woman, adultery remains a sin, murder remains a sin, stealing remains a sin, family remains the central focus of social policey, church remains central figure head of morality, ect.). So, in order to limit confusion, someone has to clearly define and describe what the second set of blue values are about.
Last edited by K-I-A 67; 03-25-2008 at 03:36 PM.
Values of Many Colors
You are alleging I have two sets of values. My own perception of my own values is more complex than that. I see myself as having scientific values first, political second, and religious third. The scientific values relevant to the forum would be the mix of Toynbee and Toffler's Ages of Civilization, Strauss & Howe's Cycles, and Toynbee and Harrington's Civilizations.
Mind you, these are interesting and relevant theories, but not mature theories. One cannot lock into anything proposed by any of these authors as set in stone to the point that new evidence and new theories aren't expected to significantly change my view of man and history. Still, if evidence and theory suggest that any political or religious thought or value is incorrect, I am inclined to throw out the political or religious thought.
I'll second your list of Blue values, and go further. I'll cling to Jefferson's self evident truths from the Revolutionary crisis. I'm also tainted by the values of the 1960s Blue Awakening; disliking war, supporting gender and ethnic equality and tolerance, and supporting protection of the environment. I dislike use of the police for political purposes. I have something of a distrust for the military industrial complex, or whatever name for it you find more fashionable. While these values are in some sense new, or at least were renewed with vigor in my youth, in other senses they are rooted deeper. I find them quite compatible with Jefferson's self evident truths, and the notion that western civilization is tainted by Agricultural Age practices that ought to be removed, a few at a time, as opportunities arise in each awakening and crisis.
Here we start to diverge. I was brought up a catholic. I am a thoroughly lapsed Catholic, shunning the dogma and hierarchy, while still greatly admiring the wisdom attributed to Jesus. In my youth, I flirted with many systems of religion, including Born Again evangelical protestantism, Wicca, and Taoism. In general, I find that each of these systems has a lot of good practical advice, handy to keep a young person out of trouble and keep a culture on track. I can respect many sincere religious individuals so long as they don't believe that their own particular system is inherently superior to all other systems, and attempt to force everyone to abide by their own system of morality.
Thus, the political values of freedom of religion and separation of church and state trump my religious values by a good safe amount. While I can cheerfully pick and choose from good advice from many religious sources, I do not believe it is my place or the government's place to force any of it on anyone else.
Thus, murder is a crime. Theft is a crime. That you find them to be sins as well is perfectly acceptable, but it is not the place of governments to punish sins. I believe that role should be reserved to God's aspect as the Father. Jesus delegated the power of forgiveness to Peter and his successors, but not the power of punishment. When a Christian begins to hate, and wishes to punish, I become most dubious as to their reading of the New Testament.
I see your values regarding sex and family as being at one level good solid practical advice. It contains much wisdom of the ages. If I were starting a family, I would personally commit to wife and children just as you say.
On the other hand, there are strong elements of prejudice there too. One sees a good deal of Agricultural Age intolerance, prejudice and arrogance there. It is not the place of government to enforce intolerance, prejudice and arrogance. Quite the opposite.
It is, however, the place of government to look over the welfare of the child. A great deal of the ancient religious wisdom relating to sex and family seems oriented to protecting the child. If a child comes into the world, someone has to take responsibility. That might be the government's place, not to enforce one particular set of religious dogmas, but to make sure that someone takes responsibility for the child. If necessary, as a last resort, the state itself must alas take responsibility from truly incompetent or uncaring parents.
Yes, family is and ought to remain very important. The importance of God is of course a matter of opinion, with the right of each individual to hold such diverse opinions protected by the Constitution. You are absolutely free to cling to whatever belief you wish, but as soon as you attempt to force your beliefs and morality on others, either personally or through the government, you trespass.
Have I been clear enough? I do not see myself as having several conflicting sets of values, but different principles have dominion over different aspects of life. Most important is the scientific. One observes what is working, and what is not. If a political or religious principle doesn't provide a positive path towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I would look for what is wrong an try to make things better, no matter what principles Jefferson or Jesus might have laid down centuries past, though throwing away the values of Jefferson and Jesus entirely would be rash too. Rules and values which might have been the best one could hope for given Agricultural Age primitive technology and totalitarian government should not be assumed to be perfect beyond change in an entirely different era.
We had to destroy the country in order to save it, sir.
You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. -- Heraclitus
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes." -- Walt Whitman
Arkham's Asylum
But couldn't they go out and destroy someone else's country???
Whoops. Never mind.
The definitive treatment of Iraq:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/
Subtlety Is The Administration's Forte
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...pid=sec-nation
U.S. Pushed Allies on Iraq, Diplomat Writes
Chilean Envoy to U.N. Recounts Threats of Retaliation in Run-Up to Invasion
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 23, 2008; Page A11
UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Mu¿oz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.
"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Mu¿oz writes.
But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Mu¿oz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.
Mu¿oz details key roles by Chile and Mexico, the Security Council's two Latin members at the time, in the run-up to the war: Then-U.N. Ambassadors Juan Gabriel Vald¿s of Chile and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of Mexico helped thwart U.S. and British efforts to rally support among the council's six undecided members for a resolution authorizing the U.S.-led invasion.
The book portrays Bush personally prodding the leaders of those six governments -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan -- to support the war resolution, a strategy aimed at demonstrating broad support for U.S. military plans, despite the French threat to veto the resolution.
In the weeks preceding the war, Bush made several appeals to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Mexican President Vicente Fox to rein in their diplomats and support U.S. war aims. "We have problems with your ambassador at the U.N.," Bush told Fox at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Los Cabos, Mexico, in late 2002.
"It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long," Bush told the Chilean president on March 11, 2003.
"Bush had referred to Lagos by his first name, but as the conversation drew to a close and Lagos refused to support the resolution as it stood, Bush shifted to a cool and aloof 'Mr. President,' " Mu¿oz writes. "Next Monday, time is up," Bush told Lagos.
Senior U.S. diplomats sought to thwart a last-minute attempt by Chile to broker a compromise that would delay military action for weeks, providing Iraq with a final chance to demonstrate that it had fully complied with disarmament requirements.
On March 14, 2003, less than one week before the invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But then-U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning them that the effort was viewed as "an unfriendly act" designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to "leave the meeting immediately," Mu¿oz writes.
Aguilar Zinser, who died in 2005, was forced out of the Mexican government after publicly accusing the United States of treating Mexico like its "back yard" during the war negotiations. Vald¿s was transferred to Argentina, where he served as Chile's top envoy, and Mu¿oz, a Chilean minister and onetime classmate of Condoleezza Rice at the University of Denver, was sent to the United Nations in June 2003 to patch up relations with the United States.
In the days after the invasion, the National Security Council's top Latin American expert, John F. Maisto, invited Mu¿oz to the White House to convey the message to Lagos, that his country's position at the United Nations had jeopardized prospects for the speedy Senate ratification of a free-trade pact. "Chile has lost some influence," he said. "President Bush is truly disappointed with Lagos, but he is furious with Fox. With Mexico, the president feels betrayed; with Chile, frustrated and let down."
Mu¿oz said relations remained tense at the United Nations, where the United States sought support for resolutions authorizing the occupation of Iraq. He said that small countries met privately in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to suspected U.S. eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," Mu¿oz said in an interview.
The United States, he added, expressed "its displeasure" to the German government every time they held a meeting in the secure room. "They couldn't listen to what was going on."
Mu¿oz said that threats of reprisals were short-lived as Washington quickly found itself reaching out to Chile, Mexico and other countries to support Iraq's messy postwar rehabilitation. It also sought support from Chile on issues such as peacekeeping in Haiti and support for U.S. efforts to drive Syria out of Lebanon. The U.S.-Chilean free trade agreement, while delayed, was finally signed by then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick in June 2003.
Mu¿oz said that Rice, as secretary of state, called him to ask for help on a U.N. resolution that would press for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. The United States had secured eight of the nine votes required for adoption of a resolution in the Security Council. Mu¿oz had received instructions to abstain. "I talked to [Lagos], and he listened to my argument, and we gave them the ninth vote," he said.
A View From Inside The Bush Administration
Very interesting indeed (remember, I SUCK, and give no time to other viewpoints. Bolding mine):
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/vi...he-Surge-11265
Over the past sixteen months, the United States has altered its trajectory in Iraq. We are no longer headed toward a catastrophic defeat and may be on the path to a remarkable victory. As a result, the next President, Democrat or Republican, may well find it easier to adopt the broad contours of this administration’s current strategy than to jeopardize progress by changing course abruptly.
That would be an ironic, but satisfying, outcome to the tortuous journey on which the Bush administration’s policy toward Iraq, and this nation’s views of Iraq, have been traveling over the past three years.
The administration’s description of the long-term American goal—a democratic Iraq that can defend itself, govern itself, and sustain itself, and will be an ally in the war on terror—has remained consistent from the time the war was launched in 2003 until now. What has shifted, due to sobering experience, is its sense of how long it might take to achieve this goal: a time frame that has stretched from months, to years, and even to decades.
I witnessed the shift first-hand. For two years, from June 2005 to July 2007, I left my teaching position at Duke to join the National Security Council staff as a special adviser for strategic planning, and in that capacity I worked closely on Iraq policy. By the middle of 2005, it was painfully obvious to everyone involved that the only decisive outcome that could be achieved during President Bush’s tenure was the triumph of our enemies, America’s withdrawal, and Iraq’s descent into a hellish chaos as yet undreamed of.
The challenge, therefore, was to develop and implement a workable strategy that could be handed over to Bush’s successor. Although important progress could be made on that strategy during Bush’s watch, ultimately it would be carried through by the next President. This was the reality behind the course followed by the administration in 2005-2006, and it remains the reality behind the new and different course the administration has been following since 2007.
This new and different strategy, now called the “surge” but at one point called by insiders the “bridge,” emerged out of a growing recognition over 2006 that our critics were right about one thing: our Iraq policy was not working. At the same time, however, and whether knowingly or ignorantly, many of those same critics were insisting that the answer lay in pursuing precisely the same strategy we already had in place. That is, they were telling us that we needed (a) to push Iraqi government officials to come together politically and (b) to train Iraqi troops so that they could take over from American forces. We had been doing exactly these things for a year, and we had been driven to the brink.
This was no solution at all. The results on the ground in Iraq made it clear that, without a dramatic change, the President would be leaving his successor with an untenable mess, if not the prospect of a catastrophic American rout. A review of administration policy was therefore launched that led to the dramatic course revision we have seen unfolding over the past year-and-a-half.
This month, the military leader of the surge, General David Petraeus, and America’s chief diplomat in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, will present their second report to Congress on the surge and its effects. Prudent and circumspect men, they will surely not advance bold claims on behalf of the policy the United States has been following under their leadership. But I expect they will speak more optimistically about the future than many thought possible eighteen months ago. Their testimony will demonstrate that, at last, the United States has a sustainable strategy for Iraq with a reasonable chance of success, and one that George W. Bush will be able to turn over with confidence to the next incumbent of the White House.
How we got here is a story in itself.
_____________
In the summer of 2005, General George Casey, the theater commander in Iraq, was pressing a military campaign whose primary goal was the training and maturing of Iraqi security forces. At the same time, Iraqis had designed a national constitution that would be the subject of a countrywide referendum in October, to be followed (assuming the constitution’s ratification) by national elections in December.
Here at home, administration policy was inundated by criticisms on every front. Much of it was reckless, but not all of it. From “skeptical supporters” of the war like Senator John McCain and the military analyst Fred Kagan came the charge that the number of American “boots on the ground” was far from sufficient to accomplish the mission. Although our military commanders in Iraq kept assuring the White House that this was not the case, the criticism flitted like Banquo’s ghost in the background of every internal discussion about the war.
Some Democrats in the “loyal opposition”—i.e., those who were not simply advocating an irresponsible strategy of defeat and withdrawal—made the same point, but more often they took a different tack. Charging that the administration had no strategy beyond “staying the course,” they proposed instead that the United States pressure the Iraqis to bring the sullen and disaffected Sunni minority into the political sphere. This would siphon support from the insurgency. In addition, the Pentagon needed to accelerate the training of Iraqi security forces to handle more of the load against the enemies of the new Iraq. And the State Department had to lean on Iraq’s neighbors to do more to help.
This counsel seemed maddeningly sensible to us. It was, to the letter, the administration’s strategy at that very moment. Still, exasperating though it may have been to be told that we should do what we were actually doing, this line of criticism also seemed to contain potentially good news. Perhaps, we thought, we could find common ground with these Democratic critics—their number included Senators Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, and Carl Levin—and forge a consensus on how to move forward.
That was the background to a decision in the fall of 2005 to release an unclassified version of General Casey’s campaign plan, along with a document explaining how all elements of American power were being mobilized to assist in its realization. The full document was called the National Strategy for Supporting Iraq, the name of which changed somewhere along the way to the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (NSVI). There was nothing new here. The release of the NSVI, bolstered by a series of frank presidential addresses, was simply an attempt to make public a number of details about our approach and offer a reasonable response to our reasonable critics.
The effort was doomed. It was overtaken by political events or, rather, by one specific event: a press conference, on November 17, 2005, by John Murtha, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania.
Murtha was a veteran of the Vietnam war and a hawk on defense spending—someone generally thought to be at home with the old “Scoop” Jackson wing of the Democratic party. When it came to Iraq, he turned out to be something else. “Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty,” Murtha summarily declared at his press conference, and now it was time to bring the troops home—as soon as possible, but no later than in six months.
Murtha was not calling for a gradual transition to Iraqi control. To the contrary, he was advocating the wholesale abandonment of Iraq. As he well knew, moreover, six months would be the fastest possible withdrawal under the most optimistic timetable, with our forces working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to pull out all of the equipment and materiel we had brought in over the previous three years. This was not a brief for haste but rather a recipe for panic.
Unlike those critics who lambasted our policy and then commended it to our attention, Murtha was presenting an unambiguous alternative. The left wing of the Democratic party and its supporters in Moveon.org had finally found a spokesman with credentials on national security to make the most extreme case for the war’s end.
The media lauded the Murtha plan, but they did not examine it closely. I spent hours with reporters in a futile effort to persuade them to show Murtha the respect of subjecting his scheme—including his bizarre notion of redeploying troops 5,000 miles away on the island of Okinawa in the Sea of Japan—to the same level of scrutiny they lavished upon administration policy. One key reporter told me, “We don’t scrutinize Murtha’s plan because none of us takes it seriously.”
Inside the White House, we joked bitterly that the only way we could get people to see the flaws in Murtha’s proposal would be to offer it as our own.
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In the end, however, even if we had managed to secure some kind of bipartisan support for our strategy, it would have made little difference. Over the course of 2006, the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq collapsed.
We had assumed that steady political movement would drain Sunni support for the insurgency by giving Sunnis a stake in the new Iraq—and that such political progress could be completed before the safety of the Iraqi population had been secured. Alas, the stunningly successful constitutional referendum of October 2005 and the national election two months later were followed by a dreadful stalemate. It took Sunnis nearly six weeks to acknowledge that the vote had been free and fair, and then squabbling within the Shiite community paralyzed its politicians in turn. Month after month, the nascent Iraqi political class found itself unable to form and seat a government. Almost a half-year of political momentum was forgone.
No less worrisome was the discovery that the Iraqi security forces were not yet in any condition to shoulder an increasing portion of the burden—to “stand up” so that coalition forces could “stand down.” At the same time, the security challenge became far grimmer. In February, al-Qaeda terrorists blew up the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Iraq. Shiite militia groups responded just as the terrorists had hoped, launching retaliatory strikes against Sunni citizens. A bloody pattern—sectarian atrocity, sectarian reprisal, sectarian counter-reprisal—took hold. Each week, attack levels reached new heights. Since even the vastly more capable U.S. forces seemed unable to tamp down the violence, there was no chance that fledgling Iraqi security forces might do so any time soon.
With the situation deteriorating throughout the spring, the administration might have begun the full-fledged reconsideration of the National Strategy for Victory that it would conduct later in the year. But suddenly the existing strategy appeared to receive a boost. After months of wrangling, the Iraqis finally installed a unity government under the leadership of the little-known Nouri al-Maliki. And U.S. special forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the charismatic leader of al Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind behind its strategy of fomenting civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. Hope rekindled that the chaos could be brought under control.
But the boost proved illusory. General Casey launched a new effort to regain control of the capital, but within weeks it foundered when several of the Iraqi units on which it depended simply failed to show up for the fight. A revised version of the Casey plan likewise came a cropper when the new Maliki government interfered with efforts to go after rogue Shiite militias that were now rivaling al Qaeda in Iraq in wreaking havoc.
Over the summer, doubts began to grow among White House officials working on Iraq; by September the NSC staff initiated a quiet but thorough review of strategy with an eye to developing a new way forward. The review, which soon expanded beyond the confines of the National Security Council, became a matter of public knowledge after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s departure in November, the day after the landslide Democratic victory in the midterm elections. The election underscored the fact that, at a minimum, the administration would have to reposition the Iraq mission in the minds of the American people. Our review confirmed that it would take more than a change of face to rescue the possibility of victory—it would take an entirely new strategy.
The idea was for our proposed change in course to be completed in time to take advantage of the release of another document. This was the much-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. Inside the White House, we hoped that the report’s recommendations would be palatable enough to blend with whatever new approach the President decided to adopt. The long-sought holy grail—a bipartisan consensus on the way forward in Iraq—seemed again within reach.
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It was not to be. While sharply criticizing the lack of progress thus far, the Baker-Hamilton commission essentially recommended back to us an accelerated version of the strategy envisioned by the NSVI: stand them up so we can stand down. While there was still some support inside the administration for continuing on that path, the interagency team on which I served was of a different mind. The situation in Iraq had eroded beyond the point envisioned by the Baker-Hamilton report; under the horrific conditions now at play, we concluded, Iraq’s security forces were far more likely to crack under the strain than to “stand up.” And those forces were the essential glue of a stable, unified future. If they went the way of Humpty Dumpty, neither they nor the new Iraq could ever be put back together again.
The Baker-Hamilton report did offer theoretical support for a short-term surge of military forces—something the President and the interagency team were also looking at very closely—but this was mentioned only in a brief passage and was far from the document’s central thrust. The White House never succeeded in shifting the conventional wisdom in Washington that Baker-Hamilton provided an alternative to current policy. Nor, unfortunately, were we ready with our own genuine alternative when the Baker-Hamilton report was released on December 6, 2006. That put paid to the idea that we could use the occasion as a means of securing bipartisan support for a new approach. By the time the President announced the surge in January, the climate had turned frostier still.
By then, the leadership of the newly triumphant Democrats on Capitol Hill had already determined that the war was irretrievably lost and that the only responsible course was to get out as quickly as possible. Signaling the emphasis the Democrats meant to place on ending our involvement in Iraq quickly, Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House, sought to make Jack Murtha her principal deputy.
As for the President’s new strategy, the Democrats labeled it “an escalation”—no doubt because polls and focus groups showed that this would make it seem least palatable to the American public. The administration countered with the proposition that we were sending “reinforcements.” The media settled on “surge.” Each of these labels had the unfortunate side-effect of obscuring the many other changes contained in the new strategy and focusing attention exclusively on the increase in military troops—certainly the gutsiest element in terms of our domestic politics but by no means the only important one.
Week after week, the Democrats attempted to use their control of Congress to suffocate the surge in its cradle. Various proposals were advanced to hobble General Petraeus and render implementation impossible. In April, just as the 30,000 new surge troops were entering the country, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared peremptorily: “This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.”
Reid was wrong. While the political standoff in Washington worsened, the situation in Iraq began to improve. Not right away or all at once, of course. In fact, to judge by the measures of greatest salience to the American media, the situation only eroded in the first half of 2007. Attacks rose in number, as did American fatalities. But Petraeus was steadily refining and adapting the new strategy, and his efforts became especially productive after the full complement of new forces was on the ground and the “surge in operations” could begin in earnest by the beginning of June.
By September 2007, when Petraeus and Crocker gave their first report to Congress, the trend line toward success was discernible. Still, the matter remained debatable—to the point where Senator Clinton felt confident enough to inform Petraeus and Crocker on national television that “the reports you provided to us require the willing suspension of disbelief” and to characterize the two men as “the de-facto spokesmen of what many of us consider to be a failed policy.”
A few months after that showdown, however, the progress was all but indisputable. By now, indeed, we can see that the surge has bought precious time for the United States and the nascent Iraqi state to progress meaningfully toward five specific objectives.
First is extirpating the inciters of sectarian violence: al Qaeda in Iraq among the Sunnis and the rogue militias among the Shiites. Second is building up a larger, more capable, and more integrated Iraqi Security Force than existed in 2006.
At the same time, Iraqis are being given the opportunity to create the means of political accommodation locally and from the “bottom up,” in ways that reflect the realities of life inside the highly complex mosaic of their country. The achievement of this third goal is the precursor to the fourth, which is to make the central, “top down” government in Baghdad more responsive to the nation’s eighteen provinces by opening its pocketbook for projects that will improve the economic and living conditions of the country’s citizenry at large.
The final goal is, perhaps, the trickiest: pushing Iraqi politicians to pass legislation on a number of important measures, including the sharing of oil revenues, the funding of infrastructure projects, the reform of de-Baathification laws, and the like. These are the notorious “benchmarks” mentioned by the President in his January 2007 speech and subjected to much derision by skeptics.
A year after Bush first announced the new strategy, progress on the first three objectives has exceeded everyone’s expectations, even those who helped design the surge. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been gravely wounded. The rogue elements within the Shiite militias are being pruned away. The Iraq Security Force is growing in size and reliability. And, following the decision of Sunni tribes to turn on al Qaeda and throw in their lot with the United States and the new Iraq, local political accommodation is proceeding at a remarkable pace.
There has also been some movement toward linking the Iraqi parliament’s spending to the needs of localities, but so far this is less impressive. As for the benchmarks on political reconciliation from the top down, it is useful to recall that we once thought such political change should precede everything else. That approach did not work. Our new strategy was based on the contrary assumption that security came first, and that parliamentary progress would lag significantly behind other elements. Of course, this has hardly prevented the President’s critics from seizing on the failure of the Iraqi government to have completed all of it benchmarks as putative evidence of the surge’s overall failure. Even here, however, there has been a measure of progress on the ground: in February, for example, the Iraqi parliament passed legislation addressing several key benchmarks, notably including deBaathification reform and the facilitation of provincial elections as well as of better relations between the provinces and the central government.
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The Petraeus-Crocker report to Congress will no doubt offer further evidence that the new approach is working but is far from having completed its assigned task. No fair-minded observer could conclude otherwise. Petraeus has already indicated that the central military element of the surge—the increase of 30,000 troops—will end by summer 2008. At that point, U.S. forces in Iraq are set to decline to pre-surge levels, roughly 130,000. The question Petraeus will now have to answer is: how long will troop levels need to stay there, and when can they start moving down?
What Petraeus must have uppermost in his mind is the record compiled by his predecessors in trying to produce results with just enough troops to come close but not enough to succeed. A premature drawdown would, by definition, cause the forfeiture of his hard-won gains. And the political reality is that once those troops left Iraq, they would not be coming back.
In a slide presentation that accompanied his September 2007 testimony to Congress, Petraeus gave a picture of what he considered an appropriate drawdown. In his reckoning, after remaining at 130,000 for some time, American troops could decline in number to approximately 115,000, then by slow and measured steps to around 100,000, then perhaps to 85,000, and so onward. The closer the troop levels came to 100,000 (or fewer) the more manageable the deployment would be militarily. At those levels, our ground forces would be able to return to a peacetime rotation schedule, which would put far less strain on the all-volunteer force.
In other words, a substantial American presence in Iraq is sustainable militarily over the long term. The great unknown is whether such a commitment would be sustainable politically here at home.
The evidence of the past sixteen months is that the American people are likely to support, or at least tolerate, a reduction in American numbers gradual enough to preserve the gains of the surge. A President McCain, for example, would probably have no trouble taking advantage of this sustainable strategy and bringing our mission in Iraq to the most successful end achievable.
What of a President Barack Obama or a President Hillary Clinton? If one were to attempt an answer to this question from the two candidates’ words and conduct during the long primary season, one would have reason to conclude that both, in promising a rapid “end” to the war with an equally rapid withdrawal of American forces, are bound and determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of at least partial victory.
But it is not impossible to imagine that these vital matters would appear differently to a Democratic President considering Iraq’s and America’s future from a seat at the desk in the Oval Office rather than from the stage of a college gymnasium filled with delirious Democratic primary voters. One might even permit oneself to hope that, while continuing to speak derogatorily of George Bush’s years as the shepherd of our Iraq policy, such a President would come to know, privately and in time, that he or she had been bequeathed something very different from a fiasco: the promise of a better outcome for Iraq, for the Middle East, and for the American people.
About the Author
Peter D. Feaver, a new contributor, is the Alexander F. Hehmeyer professor of political science and public policy at Duke University and director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. He is a co-author of Getting the Best Out of College, to be published by Ten Speed Press in June.
Last edited by Pink Splice; 03-26-2008 at 08:25 PM.
Note two things from the above article: The author was not called in until 2005 (confirming a turning shift, an internal admission of failure), and the reluctance to admit the first mistake was to start the war in the first place.
Well, I'm trying to sort out or establish the blue values. I see, you mentioned three sets of values or categories, namely scientific, political and religious with a ranking of these particular values. I assume, the ranking represents either your means of proof testing or represents your staging of applications or both.
We share a set of Blue Values. I'll just refer to them as post-Cival War American Values. So, in my opinion, there is no reason to argue or discuss these particular values.
I have no religious connection to any particular faith or religious institution. However, I still consider myself to be a faith based individual. I grew up with religion all around me, so to speak. I also recognize Judeo/Christian God as being my particular spirtual enity. So, I conduct myself in a manner which keeps me in good standing with him, so to speak. So, I'm not the type who falls prey or bows to some fundy Jesus freaks guilt trips, jumps on some new religious bus, social initiative or agree with anything or everything that comes out of some preachers or religious persons mouth. So, in other words, I won't jump off a bridge because some preacher tells me to jump. I won't molest a kid because some preacher or religious person says it alright to molest kids.
I view sin as basically meaning a wrong doing was committed. I prefer sin to be dealt with on personal level vs legally prosecuted. So, I don't support legal prosecution of adultery as a crime. I don't support the police beating political ideals into peoples heads either. I also share a similiar opinion on trespassing.
Good nuff. I don't see any head on collisions on basics, then.
Just a few examples of head on collisions... A fundamentalists might believe thoroughly in the literal word of the Christian Bible, and thus be incapable of honestly evaluating evidence of evolution, or evidence that anything existed more than 6000 years ago. A libertarian might believe that no problem exists that requires intervention by the government, thus global warming can't possibly be real. Again, you occasionally encounter individuals whose deep held values prevent them from perceiving reality. The above would be examples of religious and political values trumping scientific.
I'm not quite sure I'm with your labeling schemes. It almost seems that you label political values Blue, and religious values Red. I don't see the Red / Blue divide as quite so clear cut. Blue values might support equality, due process and free speech rights more, while Red values emphasize security and the right to bear arms. Blue populations might emphasize secular values more, Red religious. But it would all be vague and fuzzy. Not everyone that lives in any given area follows a precise manifesto.
