Tonight, the President is going to surprise us all with his new plan for victory in Iraq. This major war policy address will probably run to twenty minutes or so, though with all the pre-released details, he could probably get by with announcing “What he said.” We’d all know pretty much what he meant.
I’m not sure I’ll watch the speech. I have to say watching George Bush speak has the same effect on me as listening to someone clip their fingernails. Granted, he’s made a lot of progress on the sneer. I’m sure he’s retained the best facial-expression coaches available. But still, his tone about drives me nuts, a mix of strained patience and condescending sermonizing that may have contributed to the twins’ decision to spend more time in Argentina.
Sending more troops to Iraq shouldn’t sound like cutting back my cell phone plan, but when the President speaks, my eyes do the involuntary roll thing that usually only a teenager can pull off.
More surprising to me than any details of the new plan is that I sort-of support the idea. I mean, isn’t this the plan we should have had in place before we invaded four years ago? Our goal, of course, is complete victory against the terrorists in Iraq, or at least a government that can sustain itself, defend itself, and, uh, amuse itself.
I’m not sure on that last point, but we all get the idea.
There are an easy dozen reasons why a troop surge won’t work and might make things worse, but I keep going back to Colin Powell’s pottery store doctrine: “You break it, you own it.” We broke it in Iraq. Pulling out will unquestionably make things worse. Staying the course won’t change anything. The only thing left to try is an escalation of troops, a new general with a Ph.D., and a few months of heavy pressure on the Iraqis themselves to knock it off with the bombs and bullets and electric drills long enough to at least get the electricity back up and running.
And this time we really mean it.
I give the whole thing a snowball’s chance in Baghdad, but I think we owe it to the Iraqis to make one last, great push to leave them with a little security. A mom should be able to send Ahmed to the grocery for some figs without all the time worrying about a call to get a box and come pick up her kid. This is fundamental.
How long? Six months. Benchmarks for success? A big drop in civilian casualties and a big drop in the number of insurgent-initiated attacks.
Everything else is bullshit, and bullshit walks.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Bipartisanship
Nancy Pelosi was sworn in today as the Democratic Speaker of the House, the first woman to hold that position. It’s a great day to be a Democrat. Let the hearings begin!
After the ceremony, Republican John Boehner (that’s pronounced “bayner,” not “boner”) called on the Democrats to embrace bipartisanship.
Now, I’m as bipartisan as the next guy, but it was Boehner who, a few weeks before the November election, said in a speech to the House, “I’m beginning to think Democrats care more about terrorists than they care about Americans.” I thought these comments made a good case for bringing caning back to House proceedings.
So my bipartisan reply to Mr. Boehner is, “Go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”
This is far more polite than, say, Vice-President Cheney’s remark on the floor of the Senate to Patrick Leahy of Vermont when Cheney said “Go fuck yourself.”
But then we Democrats are more polite by disposition.
After the ceremony, Republican John Boehner (that’s pronounced “bayner,” not “boner”) called on the Democrats to embrace bipartisanship.
Now, I’m as bipartisan as the next guy, but it was Boehner who, a few weeks before the November election, said in a speech to the House, “I’m beginning to think Democrats care more about terrorists than they care about Americans.” I thought these comments made a good case for bringing caning back to House proceedings.
So my bipartisan reply to Mr. Boehner is, “Go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”
This is far more polite than, say, Vice-President Cheney’s remark on the floor of the Senate to Patrick Leahy of Vermont when Cheney said “Go fuck yourself.”
But then we Democrats are more polite by disposition.
State of Denial
One advantage to a couple of good hernias is that they make you spend lots of time lounging around the house. For me, this means lots or reading and, lately, watching videos and even some TV.
One thing I finally did was read a book on the Bush administration. I hadn’t read any up to now because it seems like every week, some new catastrophe makes obsolete even the latest books in print. I routinely read the Oregonian, a reasonably good daily newspaper. I also read a lot of the Washington Post online. Most months, I enjoy a motorcycle trip over to Ashland and hit the bookstores for the magazines: favorites include The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Harpers.
I consider myself rather well-informed.
But with all the extra lounge time on my hands, I picked up Bob Woodward’s State of Denial, and I have to say I found it scandalous. I’m not easily shocked by much that happens around Washington, and especially not by the Bush administration, but there’s a lot of depth that just doesn’t get covered in newspapers or magazines.
The biggest insight gained from Woodward was the total lack of planning for Iraq after we won the war. Despite warnings from individuals and agencies before the invasion, the administration really did seem to believe we’d be welcomed as liberators. They had zero plans for what to do if we were not. Is it possible to imagine a more colossal mistake?
Donald Rumsfeld comes across as the biggest villain in Woodward’s book, though the two biggest mistakes—short of the invasion itself—go to Paul Bremer. Bremer was Rumsfield’s man, and he replaced Lieutenant General Jay Garner as the head of postwar operations in Iraq. While Garner was still in Iraq, and over his strong objections, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and purged all Baathists from government positions.
The result of the first error was that tens of thousands of officers and enlisted men who would have stayed in place and eventually taken over security operations were sent home mad as hell at the Americans, not to mention still heavily armed. They quickly became the heart of the Sunni insurgency.
The result of the second error was that government services such as water, sewer systems, and electricity collapsed. The Interior Ministry, which controlled all these vital services, lost all of its upper and mid-level functionaries, and there was no one to take their place.
Also interesting in the Woodward book is that Colin Powell actually had two doctrines: the first is the well-known doctrine of overwhelming force, which was not followed in our invasion. The second is what Powell called the “pottery store rule: 'You break it, you own it.'”
There’s no question that we own Iraq now. We sure would love to give it back, but we’ll still be making payments long after my little blog has fallen silent.
Even if you know a lot about how we got into Iraq and how we lost it, Woodward’s book is a compelling read.
One thing I finally did was read a book on the Bush administration. I hadn’t read any up to now because it seems like every week, some new catastrophe makes obsolete even the latest books in print. I routinely read the Oregonian, a reasonably good daily newspaper. I also read a lot of the Washington Post online. Most months, I enjoy a motorcycle trip over to Ashland and hit the bookstores for the magazines: favorites include The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Harpers.
I consider myself rather well-informed.
But with all the extra lounge time on my hands, I picked up Bob Woodward’s State of Denial, and I have to say I found it scandalous. I’m not easily shocked by much that happens around Washington, and especially not by the Bush administration, but there’s a lot of depth that just doesn’t get covered in newspapers or magazines.
The biggest insight gained from Woodward was the total lack of planning for Iraq after we won the war. Despite warnings from individuals and agencies before the invasion, the administration really did seem to believe we’d be welcomed as liberators. They had zero plans for what to do if we were not. Is it possible to imagine a more colossal mistake?
Donald Rumsfeld comes across as the biggest villain in Woodward’s book, though the two biggest mistakes—short of the invasion itself—go to Paul Bremer. Bremer was Rumsfield’s man, and he replaced Lieutenant General Jay Garner as the head of postwar operations in Iraq. While Garner was still in Iraq, and over his strong objections, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and purged all Baathists from government positions.
The result of the first error was that tens of thousands of officers and enlisted men who would have stayed in place and eventually taken over security operations were sent home mad as hell at the Americans, not to mention still heavily armed. They quickly became the heart of the Sunni insurgency.
The result of the second error was that government services such as water, sewer systems, and electricity collapsed. The Interior Ministry, which controlled all these vital services, lost all of its upper and mid-level functionaries, and there was no one to take their place.
Also interesting in the Woodward book is that Colin Powell actually had two doctrines: the first is the well-known doctrine of overwhelming force, which was not followed in our invasion. The second is what Powell called the “pottery store rule: 'You break it, you own it.'”
There’s no question that we own Iraq now. We sure would love to give it back, but we’ll still be making payments long after my little blog has fallen silent.
Even if you know a lot about how we got into Iraq and how we lost it, Woodward’s book is a compelling read.
"The Dark Side"
Along with reading, I’ve also been watching videos and television. Last night, Mary and I watched a rerun of a PBS Frontline program originally aired last June. Entitled “The Dark Side,” it’s a documentary made up of over forty interviews with high-level officials from the CIA, the State Department, and members of the Bush Administration. I can’t imagine a sixty-minute program which could be more riveting or more damning.
“The Dark Side” once and for all answers the question of whether the Bush administration cooked the intelligence on Saddam’s alleged WMD and ties to al-Qaeda or if it made an honest mistake. Rather surprisingly to me, the program paints Bush himself as being initially skeptical of any links. At one point, he asked “Is that all there is?” It was a good question, and the same one that Colin Powell asked before he went before the UN.
The villain is Dick Cheney. It’s clear in the film that Cheney leaned hard on the CIA to come up with support for the conclusions he’d already reached about Iraq. Worse, working with Rumsfeld, he effectively sidelined the CIA, which had got it right and “kicked ass” in Afghanistan, and brought intelligence gathering into the Defense Department and ultimately the White House itself. Even when the CIA warned him off of bad intelligence, he continued to make the rounds saying the case for WMD was a “slam dunk” and that Saddam had ties to terrorists. If we hesitated, even for a few months, he would hit the United States.
I reacted to these kinds of high-pressure tactics the same way I react to a car salesman who tells me I have to act today. I don’t believe a word of it.
It’s amazing to me that the release of these interviews hasn’t dominated the news, both print and television, for the last year. Again, I think ongoing news trumps even recent history, and image trumps text every time. When there’s lots of good footage of today’s suicide bomber, it’s hard to get air time for interviews that were given months ago.
The death and multiple funerals of Gerald Ford have taken the spotlight off Bush and the war for a few weeks, but for me they also bring back vivid memories of listening to the Watergate Hearings on the radio. Watergate was, as has often been said, a bungled third-rate burglary, but it brought down a president and sent a dozen of his top advisors to prison. I say let the hearings begin on Iraq.
You can order the DVD of “The Dark Side” or even stream the program live here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/
I think if you watch the first minute, you’ll watch it to the end. There are also further interviews and ongoing online discussions.
“The Dark Side” once and for all answers the question of whether the Bush administration cooked the intelligence on Saddam’s alleged WMD and ties to al-Qaeda or if it made an honest mistake. Rather surprisingly to me, the program paints Bush himself as being initially skeptical of any links. At one point, he asked “Is that all there is?” It was a good question, and the same one that Colin Powell asked before he went before the UN.
The villain is Dick Cheney. It’s clear in the film that Cheney leaned hard on the CIA to come up with support for the conclusions he’d already reached about Iraq. Worse, working with Rumsfeld, he effectively sidelined the CIA, which had got it right and “kicked ass” in Afghanistan, and brought intelligence gathering into the Defense Department and ultimately the White House itself. Even when the CIA warned him off of bad intelligence, he continued to make the rounds saying the case for WMD was a “slam dunk” and that Saddam had ties to terrorists. If we hesitated, even for a few months, he would hit the United States.
I reacted to these kinds of high-pressure tactics the same way I react to a car salesman who tells me I have to act today. I don’t believe a word of it.
It’s amazing to me that the release of these interviews hasn’t dominated the news, both print and television, for the last year. Again, I think ongoing news trumps even recent history, and image trumps text every time. When there’s lots of good footage of today’s suicide bomber, it’s hard to get air time for interviews that were given months ago.
The death and multiple funerals of Gerald Ford have taken the spotlight off Bush and the war for a few weeks, but for me they also bring back vivid memories of listening to the Watergate Hearings on the radio. Watergate was, as has often been said, a bungled third-rate burglary, but it brought down a president and sent a dozen of his top advisors to prison. I say let the hearings begin on Iraq.
You can order the DVD of “The Dark Side” or even stream the program live here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/
I think if you watch the first minute, you’ll watch it to the end. There are also further interviews and ongoing online discussions.
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