What Hillary Could Say
This from Juan Cole on Hillary Clinton’s effort to explain Iraq.
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If I were advising Senator Clinton on what to say about
Iraq, this would be it: “Our troops have fought courageously and with great skill against the totalitarian, genocidal Saddam Hussein regime and its security forces. They did their job, but the Bush administration did not do its. Bush failed to secure a United Nations Security Council resolution for the war, depriving the war effort of key international support and casting the administration as an outlaw regime in the eyes of much of the world. There was no planning for the aftermath of the war. Stupid decisions were taken to dissolve the Iraqi army, to fire thousands of experienced bureaucrats and teachers, to marginalize the Sunni Arab community, and to deliver Iraq into the hands of expatriate carpetbaggers, some of them overly friendly with the ayatollahs in Tehran. Neither the US military nor the Iraqis bear the primary blame for the subsequent catastrophe. It is on the shoulders of the Bush administration. The administration has so spoiled the situation that there is no longer any hope of a military solution. Any solution to this festering crisis must be political and diplomatic. The US military is essentially being ordered to support some sides in a multi-pronged civil war against others, but without any real hope of having being able to triumph decisively in these low-intensity guerrilla wars. That is why I favor getting our troops out of Iraq and insisting that regional powers, NATO and the UN now come in to bring about a political resolution, even as the world ensures that a nonsectarian Iraqi military is trained, equipped and deployed for the protection of all Iraqis.” http://www.juancole.com/ (From his post on Thursday, June 21)
That sounds about right.
Also catch Melinda Henneberger’s advice to the Dems on abortion on today’s (June 22), NYTime’s op-ed page.
An interesting suggestion but with several major flaws:
–The “regional powers” are the ones fueling the fighting, so they have no intention of letting things settle down;
–NATO is the United States, as far as most of the world is concerned (Europe has ceased to be much of a military force in the world and its political influence is quickly dissipated by the fact that everyone knows it has no muscle to enforce any of its decisions, threats, or promiuses), so NATO involvement is just US involvement under a different name and thus will be viewed the same by the various groups fighting in Iraq (who thus will not stop fighting);
–the UN is likewise seen by Muslims in the region as a tool of the United States, moreover it proved to have little stomach for the difficulties in Iraq after suffering one major attack.
Pulling out American troops may be satisfying to an American public that does not object to entering conflicts that we can win with relative ease but which has no stomach for wars that are mismanaged. Perhaps a better solution is to quarantine Iraq–to increase the number of troops in Iraq to a level sufficient to seal off the country by repositioning our soldiers on the borders of Iraq and at all potential entry/exit points (ports, airports, etc.). That would help keep more jihadists from entering the country and help prevent the jihadists who are already there from leaving … then we just wait until the madness there burns itself out. If the Sunnis and the Shias want to slaughter each other, fine … it’s all they want to do anyway.
Your usual dyspeptic ourlook, Mr Reid–so bracing.
If the Sunnis and Shias are going to slaughter each other anyway, what is the point of our staying around to watch? referee? supply arms to each side as we now seem to be doing?
Senator Clinton could then add as a nice (and indisputable) coda: ‘Oh, and I voted to set all this in motion, too. And I’ve waffled on why I voted as I did. And I’ve spoken out of both sides of my mouth about how to get out of Iraq. Which is why you can’t trust a word I say. Thank you for your money — oh, I mean time. Thought I was speaking to my corporate donors.”
Reality is often quite bracing–like a good shot of single-malt Scotch … We would stay around to protect the Kurds, our genuine allies in the area, and to pick up the pieces once the Sunnis and Shias are done killing each other. After al, there’s a lot of valuable oil at stake, so if the people in the center and south of Iraq want to wipe each out to the last man, woman, and child (as they seem intent on doing) we might as well step back, wait until they’re done, and then work with whatever’s left. That’s what will happen if we leave–except that the Kurds would be left unprotected and it would be the Iranians or Syrians or someone else collecting the spils at the end. So better us than them. Dyspeptic refers to both disgruntled and indigestion–conditions that Iraq certainly induces in any sane person. But only children spit out distatseful things. Adults swallow it down (again, with that shot of good Scotch)
Whatever happened to “Shock and Awe?” All those who celebrated “Wag the Dog” in criticizing a really successful intervention, defended this ill begotten campaign. The coverage of that movie and the Iraqi war clearly show why the media is at the bottom in the esteem of the American public.
Irony of ironies is Bush being feated in Bosnia for saving their country.
Yesterday the secretary of state said that it was wiser to talk to all the combatants. This is the best news to come out of the Bush administration since the war. Two factors are here, tribal warfare and greed.
Greedy people, including many in the US, only want peace on their terms.
Hilary’s dilemmna shows why very few senators become president. Those horse tradings come back to haunt you.
How do you talk to people who deliberately plan suicide bombings for when a marketplace will be filled with woman and children buying bread? What do talk about with someone who sees a funeral procession as a great target of opportunity for slaughtering the people who are still in mourning from your previous attacks? Though I am no fan of Hillary’s, I do find it amusing that the one responsible, realistic, and not knee-jerk libral thing she has done (initially supporting the war) is the one thing causing her so much difficulty within her own party. It shows just how far left the Democrats have tilted and why 2008 may be eerily similar (for the democrats) to 1968 …
As an arm-chair general/president/secretary of state myself for so long, I have come to realize that working politicians don’t have the same freedom as we do to solve the problems that beset the nation.
One of these candidates will be our next president, and it wouldn’t hurt them to sound like they have a reality based policy. Juan Cole’s proposal for Clinton strikes me as one possible way she could talk and think about her future responsibility. But Peter Galbraith’s (and numerous congressional folks) have also spoken about moving over the horizon to Kurdistan or Kuwait; this seems equally plausible, especially if that would put an end to PKK incursions into Turkey (in the case of Kurdistan).
Withdrawal or no (and see Tom Reese’s reflections on this at the WashPo “faith” blog), we will have to have some policy for the Middle East–and I’d like to believe it will not be solely dictated by Israel and oil.
And while I am offering these pedagogical gems, let me also recommend a book I am midway through reading: The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr. Not sure he is wholly disinterested, but still informative (and a bit scarey). And please, Mr. Reid, no anonymouse reviews from Amazon!
You impugn my integrity! I offered no “anonymous” review–anyone interested could easily have looked up the person’s name, a person who was no more (and no less!) an arm-chair official than Ms. Steinfels, and thus his interesting take on that earlier book was as equally valid as any of the opinions offered here …
.. and given that Israel is our only friend in the region and oil is–at least for now–the most vital of vital resources for cvilization as we know it, what other goals should we seek? Promoting democracy? Seems to me we’re trying that, and most of the posters here don’t like the results. Supposed ‘justice’ for the Palestinians? They won’t be satisfied until Israel is destroyed, which takes us right back to my earlier point about our only friend in the region …
I’m not trying to hijack this thread about Juan Cole’s prescription for Hillary on Iraq, but Peggy did mention the Melinda Henneberger NYT’s op-ed piece, too. The op-ed is titled “Why Pro-Choice Is a Bad Choice for Democrats.”
In gathering info for her new book (“If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear”), Ms. Henneberger states that she traveled to 20 states, over an 18-month period, listening to a wide cross-section of women comment on the issues they care about for the 2008 presidential election. According to Ms. Henneberger, “first-time defectors” in the 2004 election, i.e., Democratic women who voted Republican, did so most often not because they were “soccer moms” who saw Bush as better able than Kerry to deliver on fighting terrorism, but because they were turned off by the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to tolerate a diversity of views on the issue of abortion.
In Ms. Henneberger’s own words:
“Many of them, Catholic women in particular, are liberal, deep-in-their-heart Democrats who support social spending, who opposed the war from the start and who cross their arms over their chests reflexively when they say the word ‘Republican.’ Some could fairly be described as desperate to find a way home. And if the party they’d prefer doesn’t send a car for them, with a really polite driver, it will have only itself to blame.
What would it take to win them back? Respect, for starters — and not only on the night of the candidate forum on faith. As it turns out, you cannot call people extremists and expect them to vote for you. But real respect would require an understanding that what supporters of abortion rights genuinely see as a hard-earned freedom, opponents genuinely see as a self-inflicted wound and — though I can feel some of you tensing as you read this — a human rights issue comparable to slavery.
Again and again, these voters said Democrats are too unwilling to tolerate dissent on abortion. It is a point of orthodoxy no more open to debate within the party than the ordination of women is in Rome.”
She also makes good points about the Democratic Party hierarchy’s overreaction to the recent Supreme Court decision upholding a ban on partial-birth abortions.
IMO the op-ed provides sage practical advice for the Democratic presidential hopefuls on the abortion issue. Ms. Henneberger warns that the abortion issue “has been very, very good to the Republican Party” and that if the Democratic candidates hope to reconnect with the first-time defectors, they will have to moderate their pro-choice statements and construct a bigger tent on the abortion issue.
William: That’s a fascinating report. Yoiu should start it as its own thread so people who are interested will see the headline and read on.
Robert–
I’m not a “Contributor” to dotCommonweal, and I therefore lack the cyberspace ability to begin a thread on this blog. Besides, borrowing from a Groucho Marx joke (“I won’t belong to any club that will have me as a member”), I wouldn’t post on any blog that would have me as a Contributor. : )
I’ll leave it up to Peggy Steinfels to decide whether Melinda Henneberger’s op-ed warrants a separate thread. If Melinda Henneberger is correct, how the Democratic Party handles (or mishandles) the abortion issue may be the key issue in the 2008 presidential election.
How is that we forget that Jewish leaders were rampant terrorists prior to the 1948 declaration of Israel as a state? Begin and other henchman terrorized societies in Europe who opposed statehood. So negotiation is possible as long as humans are alive. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/May-June_2006/0605014.html
http://terrorismexperts.org/terrorism_research_roots1.htm