November 28, 2006--Reaping the Whirlwind
Later this week President Bush will be meeting with Prime Minister Maliki in Jordan. I emphasize “in Jordon” because this is an admission that it is too unsafe for him to travel anywhere in Iraq, even to the so-called Green Zone.
In my fantasies I am hoping that at this meeting, in spite of the nouveau stay-the-course rhetoric being articulated by both Cheney and Bush, President Bush will tell Maliki that because of the results of the recent midterm election and the recommendations he knows will be offered by the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Commission, the U.S. will soon have to begin to pull out--or if you prefer a fig leaf, “redeploy” its troops. He will have no political choice. And so he, Bush, is giving the Iraqi government a preview of what is about to be happen.
But a spate of recent stories in just the NY Times snapped me right out of that fantasy.
First there was the report that the “insurgents” have figured out a way to sustain themselves financially through smuggling, selling stolen oil on the world market, and collecting ransom money for kidnapped foreigners—the Italians and French alone paid about $30 million during the past 12 months. It is estimated that through these methods the “enemy” is pulling in up to $300 million a year. And unlike us they don’t have to borrow the money from the Chinese.
Then we learn that Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army is Iraq’s most potent fighting force, is out-sourcing much of the training of his troops to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Thus far, the Times reports, about 2,000 have been prepared for battle. (Story linked below.) Maybe we should have thought of asking Hezbollah to train the Iraqi army since, after our own three-year multi-billion dollar effort to train them to “stand up so we can stand down,” it is clear that this strategy isn’t working very well.
Further, at a press conference in Estonia (a member of the Coalition of the Willing—they have supplied 200 non-combat troops) on-route to Jordon for his meeting with Maliki, when Bush was asked about what is likely to be a Baker-Hamilton recommendation—that we include axis-of-evil members Syria and Iran in regional talks to seek a solution to the chaos in Iraq--he made it clear that this will not occur until and unless Iran halts it nuclear program. So it looks as if the diplomatic option is also off the table because there is obviously no way Iran will agree to this in advance of negotiating with us.
But Secretary of State Rice is at least seeing the lack of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff as an impediment to any larger settlement and so she is making another trip to the Middle East to lean on whomever. While she is in the process of doing that, Philip Zelikow, her most-trusted senior advisor on the Arab-Israeli dispute is precipitously resigning, claiming that he needs to return to his endowed chair at the University of Virginia, after just 19 months at the State Department. In truth he is quitting because of pressure from American Jewish groups and Israeli officials—because as a realpolitik advocate he has been urging the U.S. government to put real pressure on the Israelis to make a deal with the Arabs. He sees that as the essential first step to solving other critical regional issues. So he’s gone.
We also hear that the Baker Commission is split over the issue of “timetables” or “benchmarks,” or whatever you want to call them. Things within the Commission got much more complicated after the Democrats did so well in the recent election—if the Republicans had been able to keep control of Congress Baker would have retained the elevated status he had as the family consigliore, again coming to the rescue of misbehaving “junior.” The Democrat members of the commission are apparently feeling feistier and less willing to go along with Baker’s desire to be seen as a version of Prime Minister Disraeli. So maybe instead of providing Bush with a plan for a respectable way out, the Commission will issue recommendations plus dissents and the Cheney wing will have the confusion it wants and within which it thrives. Confusion that enables them to continue carry out their ruinous global fantasies.
While all of this is going on, what are we currently debating? Raging in the media is a storm about NBC News deciding yesterday to call what is occurring in Iraq a “civil war.” The White House press secretary called this “a stunt,” preferring instead to refer to it as a “new phase in the war” or “sectarian violence” or an “insurgency.”
Whatever. But in the meantime, buried today in a box on page A14, the Times also carries its list of recently confirmed Americans killed in action—eight are listed. Two were 19, two others were 20, and none were from New York City, Los Angeles, or Houston. Nor were any from the families of anyone in Congress or the White House.
In my fantasies I am hoping that at this meeting, in spite of the nouveau stay-the-course rhetoric being articulated by both Cheney and Bush, President Bush will tell Maliki that because of the results of the recent midterm election and the recommendations he knows will be offered by the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Commission, the U.S. will soon have to begin to pull out--or if you prefer a fig leaf, “redeploy” its troops. He will have no political choice. And so he, Bush, is giving the Iraqi government a preview of what is about to be happen.
But a spate of recent stories in just the NY Times snapped me right out of that fantasy.
First there was the report that the “insurgents” have figured out a way to sustain themselves financially through smuggling, selling stolen oil on the world market, and collecting ransom money for kidnapped foreigners—the Italians and French alone paid about $30 million during the past 12 months. It is estimated that through these methods the “enemy” is pulling in up to $300 million a year. And unlike us they don’t have to borrow the money from the Chinese.
Then we learn that Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army is Iraq’s most potent fighting force, is out-sourcing much of the training of his troops to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Thus far, the Times reports, about 2,000 have been prepared for battle. (Story linked below.) Maybe we should have thought of asking Hezbollah to train the Iraqi army since, after our own three-year multi-billion dollar effort to train them to “stand up so we can stand down,” it is clear that this strategy isn’t working very well.
Further, at a press conference in Estonia (a member of the Coalition of the Willing—they have supplied 200 non-combat troops) on-route to Jordon for his meeting with Maliki, when Bush was asked about what is likely to be a Baker-Hamilton recommendation—that we include axis-of-evil members Syria and Iran in regional talks to seek a solution to the chaos in Iraq--he made it clear that this will not occur until and unless Iran halts it nuclear program. So it looks as if the diplomatic option is also off the table because there is obviously no way Iran will agree to this in advance of negotiating with us.
But Secretary of State Rice is at least seeing the lack of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff as an impediment to any larger settlement and so she is making another trip to the Middle East to lean on whomever. While she is in the process of doing that, Philip Zelikow, her most-trusted senior advisor on the Arab-Israeli dispute is precipitously resigning, claiming that he needs to return to his endowed chair at the University of Virginia, after just 19 months at the State Department. In truth he is quitting because of pressure from American Jewish groups and Israeli officials—because as a realpolitik advocate he has been urging the U.S. government to put real pressure on the Israelis to make a deal with the Arabs. He sees that as the essential first step to solving other critical regional issues. So he’s gone.
We also hear that the Baker Commission is split over the issue of “timetables” or “benchmarks,” or whatever you want to call them. Things within the Commission got much more complicated after the Democrats did so well in the recent election—if the Republicans had been able to keep control of Congress Baker would have retained the elevated status he had as the family consigliore, again coming to the rescue of misbehaving “junior.” The Democrat members of the commission are apparently feeling feistier and less willing to go along with Baker’s desire to be seen as a version of Prime Minister Disraeli. So maybe instead of providing Bush with a plan for a respectable way out, the Commission will issue recommendations plus dissents and the Cheney wing will have the confusion it wants and within which it thrives. Confusion that enables them to continue carry out their ruinous global fantasies.
While all of this is going on, what are we currently debating? Raging in the media is a storm about NBC News deciding yesterday to call what is occurring in Iraq a “civil war.” The White House press secretary called this “a stunt,” preferring instead to refer to it as a “new phase in the war” or “sectarian violence” or an “insurgency.”
Whatever. But in the meantime, buried today in a box on page A14, the Times also carries its list of recently confirmed Americans killed in action—eight are listed. Two were 19, two others were 20, and none were from New York City, Los Angeles, or Houston. Nor were any from the families of anyone in Congress or the White House.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
12:46 PM
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