On John Kerry, Iraqi Militias and Federalism

Re: The Post below this one.

Retaining private militias in Iraq is a dumb, invidious idea and John Kerry’s partial endorsement of them provides yet further evidence of why he should never be President (though I did grit my teeth and pull the donkey lever as the less vile option last November). Kerry’s proposal reveals a disturbing lack of knowledge of recent history, basic political science and common sense. “Tribal, ethnic and religious militias” do not answer to “Iraq” they answer to their individual constituencies and leadership -- this is why they are militia and not the national army. In contrast to Kerry’s tendentious naiveté, Larry Diamond, a professor of political science and sociology and Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution has written a book based on his four months working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Though he opposed the war, he believed in the moral imperative of rebuilding Iraq and his Squandered Victory is an infuriating and depressing tale of imperial hubris and criminal ineptitude. Throughout the jeremiad/indictment, he discusses the widely believed necessity of disbanding the many Iraqi militias for national solidarity and safety as well as the CPA’s failed efforts to accomplish that vital task.

“Multiple centers of power in each section of the country, particularly in the Shiite south, require a sufficiently peaceful and free climate so that alternative political parties can mobilize support. It was precisely this concern – not just for the transitional period but well beyond – that led to a number of us within the CPA to stress so heavily the importance of demobilizing the various militias. We knew that if the major parties retained their own substantial armed forces, they were likely to use them to intimidate and suppress opposition in their own areas of strength, a party militias have done in countless other transitional political systems.” (329)

In this entry I provide links to recent reportage of just this sort of militia muscle already being flexed by the Kurds and the Shiites. Perhaps John Kerry hasn’t read these reports but Morgan should have and they are not promising for their shared thesis. Morgan argues:

Finally, on the matter of militias, we all agree. They must go eventually. But I tend to agree with Talabani and SCIRI (even) that this isn't exactly the time, what with a national army that can barely function, to disarm militais that many around Iraq see as their only protection. (And who's going to do this disarming, by the way?)

The proper time to demobilize the militias was under the CPA and the failure to do (owing to lack of money and military force) has been one of the most profound mistakes of the American occupation . . . . one that Larry Diamond laments at length. What Morgan can not seem to countenance, even though he should have read the articles I provided by now, is that militias are not helping to “protect” Iraqis as common citizens but to advance their own sectarianism. Again, if militia members wish to aid the nation as a whole then they should join the national army, otherwise their chain of command and raison d' etre are not to be trusted. Morgan queries:

I posed a thought problem to AK. Would you advocate the same disarming of Hamas right now? If not, what is the meaningful difference? I think this is a serious question.

It is not a serious question because the answer is a no-brainer. Of course Hamas should be disarmed for the good of the Palestinian nation and the Palestinian Authority, as the only legitimate state government, must take it upon itself to do so. The militias of Hamas are not there to protect and promote the recognized apparatus of state but to advance their own Islamist agenda, a situation that could potentially break into civil war. (So too with some of the Islamist militia like the Mahdi Army in Iraq.) Hamas’s armed force challenges the monopoly of violence so necessary for the integrity of the state and their demobilization should have occurred long ago. Failing that, it will have to happen before the Palestinian government can consolidate sovereign control of its territory. This is Weber 101; is Morgan really suggesting that a militarized Hamas, like the Badr Brigades, are a good idea for the nations in question or one that should simply go unchallenged?

Though beginning to acknowledge some rather dramatic flaws in Talabani (Kirkuk), Morgan rather fatuously argues,“Who else is there?”:

And thus we're back to the question of who. Question A. And from everything I can tell, Mr. Talabani is the person who has best positioned himself to represent Kurdish interests in the name of national consensus and not in the name of Kurdish separatism. That isn't to say he is without fault. But I think AK has some responsibility to fuse his critique with some recognition of the above reasoning. If not, I'm not sure I get the point.

This is obtuse and lazy thinking on his part for there are roughly five million Kurds in Iraq and hundreds of political figures he’s never heard of, so Morgan’s in no position to assert that Talabani is the best man when the he is making such poor decisions. Morgan lacks expertise on this matter so he simply doesn’t see any other option available. Again, it is not my place to name a replacement for Talibani so much as criticize him for his sectarian bias at the expense of the Iraqi nation, however, there are other interesting figures in Kurdish politics worthy of consideration like Hoshyar Zubari, Rowsch Shaways and Dr. Mahmoud Othman. I reject any need to fuse my critique with such sloppy reasoning. This slavish devotion to Talibani to spite reason leads to blatantly confused and contradictory thinking in Morgan’s last post that should be corrected:

Talabani's position on Kirkuk is the one I find most troubling and I appreciate and agree with AK's point that it is hard to imagine Iraq cohering as a nation with separatist militias running about. But AK misrepresents my argument in one important way. I never said that Talabani is "the best man to represent Kurdish interests," though he may very well be that, I said that he is the best man to transform Kurdish interests into something compatible with Iraqi plural democracy.

Well, clearly, if Talabani has called for a specifically Kurdish city in the multiethnic Kirkuk, sanctioned militias such as the Badr Brigade and the peshmerga and they, in turn, have already begun to engage in sectarian violence, then Talibani is obviously not the best man to: “transform Kurdish interests into something compatible with Iraqi plural democracy.” Indeed he appears to be quite culpable in dividing the Iraqi state even further for none of those actions are in the interest of the state per se. This is a prime example of the terrifying difficulties facing Iraq in trying to build a federal system and a pluralist democracy from so many fractious interests and armed populations. Sanctioning the violence of militias and promoting ethnic conflict in Kirkuk are just the sort of centripetal forces that threaten to tear the state apart.
One of the many dangers of the style of ethnocentric politics that Talibani plays too frequently is in the potential to legally enshrine ethnic power blocs into a sort of Lebanese balancing act, where regionalism and sectarianism all too easily triumph over national unity, especially when neighboring countries are simultaneously exerting malign influence. A Lebanese style result could easily engender safe havens for terrorists or insurgents in sympathetic provinces, notably Anbar, while competing blocs happily devolve into semi-autonomy (Kurdistan). Charles Tripp, a London historian, has noted in a Christian Science Monitor article that the carving up of Iraqi bureaucracies in a Lebanese manner is already under way:

Mr. Tripp says the treatment of cabinet posts as patronage tools was a factor behind the failure of Iraq's parliament under a constitutional monarch, and the 1958 coup that overthrew the monarchy. He also worries that ethnic and religious divisions will dog efforts to write the constitution, because at the moment there seems to be little common ground.

Worst of all, a failure to restore security or improve the economy quickly could damage average Iraqis' support for the system, as happened before 1958."The pattern of the possible unraveling of parliamentary democracy in the face of the security problem is all there,'' says Tripp. "Can people avoid it? I'm a great believer that no one is condemned by the past, but it's going to take incredible vision from Iraq's new leaders."

When “incredible vision” is called for, the militia myopia of Talibani’s present politics will not do. A simple calculus of what we should watch for and critique becomes evident when considering the potential for such a disaster. Whatever benefits power sharing, federalism, national solidarity and pluralism is too be applauded, and whatever engenders further sectarian violence, religious extremism or ethnic cleansing should be harshly condemned. In the consolidation and legitimation of state power, there can be no area of militarized violence that is outside of state control. It is past time for Iraq to disband all of its militia in favor of national force answering to the state alone and to declare that Kirkuk is not a Kurdish city but a multiethnic Iraqi one.

Kerry on Militias

AK and I have been arguing back and forth about Talabani and more specifically about the militias, notably the Peshmerga and the Badr Brigades, for some time now. The last salvo, from myself, is posted directly below this post. AK, in general, has talked about Kurd and Shia reluctance to abandon the militias right now as proof of the poor leadership qualities of thos representatives. I've been more willing to see it their way, partly because I've been more willing to support the nascent Iraqi political leadership in general. AK thinks this is naive and uncritical.

Interestingly, Kerry comes in on my side in today's op-ed in The New York Times about what should be done in Iraq. Admittedly, AK was no Kerry supporter and this proves nothing, except that maybe the idea of putting the militia disbandment aside for the time being isn't exactly wacky wild thinking.

Iraq, of course, badly needs a unified national army, but until it has one - something that our generals now say could take two more years - it should make use of its tribal, religious and ethnic militias like the Kurdish pesh merga and the Shiite Badr Brigade to provide protection and help with reconstruction. Instead of single-mindedly focusing on training a national army, the administration should prod the Iraqi government to fill the current security gap by integrating these militias into a National Guard-type force that can provide security in their own areas.

Talabani Redux

AK and I have been debating back and forth about Talabani and the overall quality and wisdom of the new Iraqi leadership for some time now. The most recent entry, with references to other posts in the ongoing debate, can be found here. In that post, AK writes:

First off I’m not accepting the debate entirely on Morgan’s terms. My assertion is somewhat different from Morgan’s rather awkward formulation: not that Talabani is not the best politician to represent Kurdish interests, but that Talabani is the wrong man to be President of Iraq. My informed suspicion is that he places sectarian interests, primarily Kurdish, above those of the Iraqi nation and this cynical view of his politics is well supported by his endorsement of violent, non-governmental militia and his repeated calls to ethnically divide the city of Kirkuk in favor of the Kurds. As to who could better fill his federal position I’ve little idea, for I’m no where near as impressed by Iraqi politicians as Morgan has been time and again (e.g. the con-man Chalabi and the thuggish Allawi). Aside perhaps from Hussain Shahristani, who doesn’t have a political base, it is not my place to nominate a replacement, only to say that the current office holder is a very poor choice with invidious results.

Fair enough, and he has some good points here. Talabani's position on Kirkuk is the one I find most troubling and I appreciate and agree with AK's point that it is hard to imagine Iraq cohering as a nation with separatist militias running about. But AK misrepresents my argument in one important way. I never said that Talabani is "the best man to represent Kurdish interests," though he may very well be that, I said that he is the best man to transform Kurdish interests into something compatible with Iraqi plural democracy. Certainly he is much more interested in doing that than his main rival in Barzani. Now, AK mentions Shahristani. From what I can tell, Shahristani seems an admirable fellow. But, as AK admits, he does not speak for the Kurds and does not represent, even vaguely, Kurdish interests. Thus, if AK truly objects to Talabani so strenuously than he must either believe that A) there is a better, nationally recognized, Kurd who could hold high office in the national government, B) It would be OK if no Kurd held high office in the national government or C) Someone else, someone not deeply involved with politics in the Kurdish parts of Iraq, could fulfil the role of speaking for the Kurds as Talabani does.

C seems to me outright implausible and I think AK would agree. Whatever happens with a federal system or not, there are such things as Kurdish interests, Shia interests, Sunni interests, Turkomen interests, etc. The point is to make them cohere. But ignoring them, now, in this situation, would be a recipe for disaster.

Which suggests that B would be an outright disaster as well. As AK and a million others have often pointed out, one of the big difficulties right now is that there is insufficient Sunni, Anbar province type representation in the national government. To leave the Kurds also without significant representation in the national government would be pretty crazy. So there has to be someone.

And thus we're back to the question of who. Question A. And from everything I can tell, Mr. Talabani is the person who has best positioned himself to represent Kurdish interests in the name of national consensus and not in the name of Kurdish separatism. That isn't to say he is without fault. But I think AK has some responsibility to fuse his critique with some recognition of the above reasoning. If not, I'm not sure I get the point.

Finally, on the matter of militias, we all agree. They must go eventually. But I tend to agree with Talabani and SCIRI (even) that this isn't exactly the time, what with a national army that can barely function, to disarm militais that many around Iraq see as their only protection. (And who's going to do this disarming, by the way?) I posed a thought problem to AK. Would you advocate the same disarming of Hamas right now? If not, what is the meaningful difference? I think this is a serious question.

Love That Bono

I guess this is Africa Sunday at Chronicles on OTR. Bono was just on Meet the Press and I must say I was highly impressed. He seems to have mastered what I think is a brilliant rhetorical strategy for trying to get the US on board with the current historical opportunity for turning things around on the poorest continent. Indeed, he was clear that this should not be an occasion for a broad political attack on the War, etc. etc. Not that there isn't a place for that, but that it has nothing to do with mobilizing support from the G8 on a new approach to Africa. Good stuff. I must hand it to the man, he's serious about this. And he was clear that he has heard and understood the analysis about how political tyranny and corruption has to be part of the discussion about economic aid in Africa.

This is a war that can be won so much more easily than the war against terror, and we wish the president and others luck in winning the war against terror. But this- -there will be a time when AIDS, you know, they'll find a vaccine, it will be over, malaria will be over. No, this is an issue that I think can unite Europe, can unite the world. And remember the rest of the world are very suspicious about the G8 countries, about the industrialized world. They're not sure, you know, if we have any values. They're not sure who we are. They meet us with our military, they meet us with our trade, our movies, our, you know, commodities. But they need to meet who we are on a deeper level. And that's where they meet us with foreign assistance.

And if it's spent well, if it's not used to redecorate presidential palaces and as it's not now. This is targeted, focused aid we're talking about now, only given to people who are tackling corruption. Then everyone's with them. Now, this is, I think, this will unite people. And I fear--and it's the reason I'm talking to you today--that, you know, because there's so much going of in America with the war in Iraq and stuff, that you might miss this opportunity. I love America. I believe in America. It offends me, it upsets me when the rest of the world thinks America is not doing enough. The president is right to say they're doing a quarter of all aid to Africa. He has doubled, even tripled if he follows through, aid to Africa. But they are about to double aid, the rest of Europe, to double aid, so that will leave America as one-eighth of all aid going to Africa if they don't match that. And that's not a place Americans want to be, one-eighth. And that will be Europe doing four times as much as America. You know, I want to encourage Americans just to give their president permission. I know he wants to do this, but his advisers must break with this kind of fiscal conservativity on this one issue. This is the moment to be generous right now. I'm sure of that.

More on Africa

This column by Ruaridh Nicoll at The Observer strikes something of the same mood I was trying to get at in the Sachs post below.

"Much of July's issue of Prospect magazine, the 'Political Publication of the Year', is dedicated to knocking all things Live8ish. Alexander Linklater, its deputy editor and a close friend, hooted when he heard I planned to march. 'What for?' he cried. 'A watered-down version of debt relief?' . . .

Here's David Rieff in Prospect: 'Every seasoned aid worker knew at the time [of Live Aid], as they know now on the eve of Live8, that there is no necessary connection between raising a lot of money for a good cause and spending that money well, just as there is no necessary connection between caring about the suffering of others and understanding the nature and cause of that suffering.'

He doesn't mention what should be done about corruption though, beyond nothing. If the new liberals are being really extreme, they suggest sending bombs instead of aid. Rieff's meaning is pretty clear. Understanding is the preserve of the few. Everybody else is thick, or uninterested, or prodded into action because they want to say thumbs down to bad things. . . .

The List, Edinburgh and Glasgow's event guide, sent out one of those Make Poverty History wristbands with this fortnight's issue, so I have one sitting on my desk. As Linklater mocked me for deciding to go on the march, I found myself slipping it on, my little amulet against his liberal cold-heartedness. He wanted to know whether I was marching in support of Gordon Brown's Marshall Plan for Africa, and I thought, well yes, why not? It's a start. Actually, I'll be marching because of those in Africa who are not corrupt, but who'd prefer not to start a bloody civil war to clear corrupt leaders from their presidential mansions. I'll be thinking about all the individuals I know, and all those I don't, who can't make a decent life for themselves, because no one can seem to make any damn difference."

Sachs on Africa

An important op-ed by Jeffrey Sachs. My only point of criticism would be the following: conservatives, as they often do in social welfare debates, tend to look at the debacle in Sub-Saharan Africa as largely a matter of failed governments and the failure of African states to get their shit together. Liberals tend to stress overwhelming poverty and disease and the reponsibility of richer countries to do something about those things, if only because they can (though many also rightfully point out that Africa colonial history isn't exactly unrelated to the current state of things).

I'm inclined to think that the liberals are more right, that there is such a responsibility, that much can be done, and that there is a moral imperative to do so. And many conservatives point their fingers where they do merely to avoid the issue and to duck the responsibility implied therein. But liberals need to adopt some of the talk about failed states and governmental culpability: partly because its true and partly because they need to call what is surely a bluff by many, though certainly not all, conservatives. That said, Sachs is right, Tony Blair is trying to do the right thing, and the Bush adminstration has once again shown itself to be small minded, petty, lying, and despicable.

AT a time when Africa could achieve so much success in escaping poverty, America's strategy for helping the continent is in a shambles.

The head of President Bush's Millennium Challenge Corporation recently resigned after failing to get the program moving. Democratically elected African leaders have criticized the lack of action by the United States. Recent Congressional hearings showed that America's efforts to control malaria in Africa have been more about advertising than controlling malaria. And, the president recently rebuffed a call by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain to announce a worldwide effort to double aid to Africa before the Group of 8 summit meeting next month. . .

Inaction by the United States will claim millions of lives and add to global instability. By joining the new worldwide effort to support Africa, Mr. Bush would honor America's longstanding but unmet commitments, our security interests and our nation's generosity.

Relax: "We've Won" the Iraq War

Whew! That whole Iraq War thing wasn’t really as close as I thought it turns out. According to the American Enterprise Institute’s Karl Zinsmeister, “The War is Over, and We Won”:

What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over. Egregious acts of terror will continue—in Iraq as in many other parts of the world. But there is now no chance whatever of the U.S. losing this critical guerilla war. . . . .

The terrorist struggle has hardly ended. Even a very small number of vicious men operating in secret will find opportunities to blow up outdoor markets and public buildings, assassinate prominent political figures, and knock down office towers. But public opinion is not on the insurgents’ side, and the battle of Iraq is no longer one of war fighting—but of policing and politics.

Policing and political problem-solving are mostly tasks for Iraqis, not Americans. And the Iraqis are taking them up, often with gusto. I saw much evidence that responsible Iraqis are gradually isolating the small but dangerously nihilistic minority trying to strangle their new society. With each passing month, U.S. forces will more and more become a kind of SWAT team that intervenes only to multiply the force of the emerging Iraqi security forces, and otherwise stays mostly in the background.

Strange how often metrics shift as this war progresses (and according to the above, how could it not be progress?). I thought one of the justifications for this conflict had something to do with terrorism and the War on Terror. Turns out it was a War on Guerillas, which is unambiguously over, according to Zinsmeister. Terrorism is actually just a fact of life that can occur “in Iraq as in many other parts of the world.” Who knew?

Seriously though, just how close is Zinsmeister’s present analysis of military accomplishment to the prediction of an un-named “senior Marine officer” in this Sunday’s NYTimes?

"I think the drawdown will occur next year, whether the Iraqi security forces are ready or not," a senior Marine officer in Washington said last week. "Look for covering phrases like 'We need to start letting the Iraqis stand on their own feet, and that isn't going to happen until we start drawing down'. "

On Mammon, China and North Korea

The Weekly Standard has this wondrous hatchet job on the ex-wunderkind of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed. What sort of clients has Ralph Reed been representing with his Century Strategies lobbying firm?

There's Enron, for example. The energy trading company was one of Century Strategies' first clients, in fact--it signed its first contract with Reed, for $114,000 plus expenses over 12 months, in September 1997. Century Strategies helped Enron push an energy deregulation plan through the Pennsylvania state legislature. Enron chose not to renew the contract in 1998. A few years later, on October 6, 2000, Enron signed another contract with Reed, this one for $75,000 plus expenses for six months.

Enron, China, Porto Rican statehood, Indian gambling interests, etc. all in the service of Christ? When the flagship of neoconservatism starts to shellack the most meretricious twerp of the Christian Right for serving Mammon over God, I can’t help but applaud. Reed’s opposition (Democratic or Republican!) should create a lurid latex mock-up of the ancient demon of greed -- horns, warts and filthy lucre pouring from every orifice -- to shadow the hypo-Christian on the campaign trail: “What, Ralph, don’t you remember me? What about all the good times we shared?”

The American Prospect forks the Christian Right in a similar pickle of inconvenience with James Gorenfeld’s detailed exposé of Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s funding of conservative causes and the Washington Times while simulataneously flattering and dealing business with the vile police state of North Korea. This is wild and weird material that can’t sit well with an even moderately honest conservative Christianity. Moon’s massive fortune has financed Christian Right stalwart’s like Tim LaHaye and Jerry Falwell, helped to conceive and promote the pseudo-science of intelligent design, and bought an motley assortment of US Senator’s and Congressmen to witness Moon’s crowning as the messiah -- all while being obviously deranged and theologically confused. (In the last link, StCynic has great fun with Moon’s communiqué of beatification at a celestial conference attended by Christ, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin and Deng Xiopeng. Really.)

United States of China - Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Oil Conglomerate

Question: What do Unocal, Maytag, and IBM's personal computer division have in common?

Answer: They are all targeted as the result of America's wrong-headed "free-trade" monetarist foreign policy.

Apparently, it takes an oil company to make Republi-vangelicals realize that their relentless pursuit of a dollar may actually be destructive to the American economy and people.

Yes, apparently sending a few billion dollars a year to the Chinese state-owned business conglomerate results in making them rich enough to take over our American businesses. Don't think for a moment that successfully buying American businesses won't mean those jobs automatically move to China, either. It only makes our dependence on China that more complete.

For those that don't keep up on oil companies, let's review what Unocal potentially being a Chinese company means:

1) Unocal is on the brink of being taken over by Chevron-Texaco, which broke into the Fortune 500 top ten when those two companies merged. The acquisition of Unocal by Chevron-Texaco would rival Exxon-Mobile and is a bad enough development for consumers since that would put Standard Oil West and Standard Oil East back together and push them to the brink of reconstituting one of the largest monopolies in the world.

2) Unocal was posed to become a major Asian producer when the Taliban went bat-shit crazy in the 1990s. That pipeline still holds the potential for uniting South-Middle Asia, and although Unocal is not currently bidding, a take-over by China would almost guarantee they would dominate that project.

3) Unocal is already heavily involved in oil operations on Alaska's North Slope. This puts Unocal in a position of pre-eminence for drilling in ANWR should that be approved.

4) Unocal owns a sixth-part of Alyeska - the company that operates the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. 20% of all American produced oil.

Now, I will connect the dots for anyone who can't see the obvious problem with this situation.

If Unocal is bought by the Chinese, they would collect a premium on every barrel of oil sent through the Alaska pipeline - which is about one-fifth of every drop of oil produced in America. Want to see oil prices really screw the American economy?

If Unocal is bought by the Chinese, about one-eighth of all oil produced in Alaska would belong to the Chinese. This situation would only worsen if ANWR were opened for exploration - both because of expanded drilling opportunities for Unocal and because of a pipeline extension that would be a windfall for Alyeska.

Are you seeing big super-tankers full of dollars moving from San Francisco over to China?

If Unocal is bought by the Chinese, and wins contracts for natural gas and oil pipelines across Afghanistan, we would actually have American soldiers defending the ability of the Chinese government to turn a profit from international oil and gas markets. Those guys wearing our uniforms in Afghanistan? Yeah, they would be dying for China.

If Unocal is bought by the Chinese, our entire economy suddenly becomes threatened with being subject to Chinese conditions. We import BILLIONS of dollars worth of goods from China - many of which are used as parts in our floundering manufacturing sector. Those parts could suddenly face drastic price increases in the threat of a pipeline slowdown/shutdown forced by Unocal. The domestic need for oil would be irrelevant for drilling in ANWR as Chinese demand leads to oil wells being capped and held for Chinese use until prices make it profitable to sell to American refiners - prices like $100 per barrel, for instance.

In other words, our wrong-headed destruction of barriers to American money flowing into China is about to come home to roost in a very big way.

It's time to act now, before the future of America is held in the hands of the Chinese government.

Why I oppose Drilling in ANWR

Xpatriated Texan is a semi-regular guest blogger. You can find his blog here This post was originally posted there and is cross-posted here to induce hybrid vigor.


After getting into two more online arguments in the last two days about energy policy and drilling in ANWR, and having to repeat information I've given out time after time (after time after time after time), I decided that I should put it all together for everyone to see. This way I can merely point to my blog and tell people to read it before they want to discuss ANWR with me.

Here is a summary of the arguments for and against drilling. Thankfully, it also debunks the claims from both sides. Both sides, it seems, are bursting at the seams with fertilizer.

I will admit from the beginning that I'm not that interested in the ecology of oil production. We need oil for our world to work properly, and that's simply the fact. It has to come from somewhere, and it is generally better if we produce it ourselves than if we import it. Unless and until someone perfects a substitute for oil in our modern world, we are just going to have to deal with the environmental fall-out, both at the production site and at the usage site. This doesn't mean we should simply say, "Screw it, let someone else clean up the mess." No, it means that we should recognize that our way of life is ultimately destructive and do everything we can to limit that destruction. I, for one, am not about to go back to the days of the Old West just to save a few barrels of oil a year.

If you approach this issue from any other perspective, you are being hypocritical about it.

Here's the point of opposition: the amount of oil that will be produced from ANWR is too little to be worth the damage it will cause. Further, it is not necessary for us to develop ANWR at all. It is a better choice, a wiser choice, to save it for future development.

Hold on to your hats, it's time to throw some numbers at you.

Currently, the United States consumes approximately 20 million barrels of oil per day. Of this, we import just under twelve million barrels of oil. This is the level of "dependence on foreign oil" that everyone likes to talk about and sound like they're special.

Here's a link to a list of the top countries of origin for American oil imports. If you look at it, you'll notice something no one ever speaks about - we aren't that dependent on the Persian Gulf. Of the top five importers into the United States, only one - Saudi Arabia - is in the Middle East. Depending on the exact day, Canada, Mexico, or Venezuela will send more oil than Saudi Arabia. Some days, all three do.

If you look at the next five - again, only one is a Persian Gulf country. Exactly the same pattern holds for the next five. Strange. I thought the Arabs were holding us hostage over oil prices. It's a funny way to make us dependent on them when the top three Persian Gulf importing countries contribute less than twelve percent of our oil imports. Exactly who are we trying to declare independence from? The Canadians and Mexicans? If so, then why the Hell did we ratify NAFTA?

The most optimistic analysis puts the average maximum daily output from ANWR at about two million barrels of oil per day. At that rate of production, the site should produce for at least 25 years, and probably closer to 35 years. Okay, so it looks like ANWR will produce enough oil for us to tell the Saudis to shove off. If construction started today, that level of production would not be reached for eight to ten years.

Moreover, we don't want to quit buying oil from the Saudis. If you look at this chart, and do a little math, you will find out that the US accounts for slightly more than sixteen percent of all Saudi Arabian oil. That means we are more important to their economic well-being than they are to ours. To put it differently, if all oil between them and us were cut off, it would hurt them more than us. Who is truly dependent?

This means that we have a tool to use in international politics. Understand that Saudi Arabia cannot produce enough food to feed itself. When the price of our oil goes up, the price of their food goes up. Guess which one can more easily be done without?

Here's the next reason why we don't need to drill in ANWR - we have Canada and we have Mexico. Canada actually holds the second largest amount of oil in the world - and that's only counting oil that is both known and able to be recovered with current technology. If you count what is known and will not be accessible for several years, Canada is actually way over Saudi Arabia in oil. How much? 175.6 trillion barrels. The associated natural gas - which is liquid due to low temperatures - totals more than all the natural gas known to exist in the rest of the world.

Drilling in ANWR now looks about like spitting on a fish before you throw it in the ocean. It may make you feel better, for some odd reason, but there's just no point in it.

Here's the real kicker - oil from Edmonton is cheaper than oil from the North Slope - which is cheaper than oil from ANWR would be. Even if production prices are exactly equal - which they aren't - Edmonton is a thousand miles closer. That means the cost of getting it from there to here is cheaper.

So instead of begging to the Saudi princes, President Bush should beat a fast track to Edmonton - perhaps take in a hockey game, eh? - and look at ways to work on an international partnership with Canada. ANWR will never replace all of the Saudi oil flowing into the US - Alberta can - and should. Let's double Canadian oil output and see how desperate the Saudis become when we tack on a $5 per barrel surcharge on oil that comes from non-democratically governed countries that deny equal status and voting rights to women.

Let the oil in ANWR stay where it is. If it is ever needed - like in 200 years when Alberta runs out of oil - then it will actually be worth the price of getting it out of the ground.

Hitchens: A Terror Video of One's Own

We’ve had an good exchange here on OTR over Christopher Hitchen’s descent into reactionary madness. Okracokepost’s entry focuses on Hitchen’s lunatic assertion that criticism of Guantanamo is “covert sympathy with the aims of and objectives of jihad and an overt, if witless and sinister, hatred of the United States.” This position places Hitchens well to the right of the neoconservative mandarin William Kristol and even Republicans like Senator Mel Martinez.

So far, however, this blog has only discussed the last half of Hitchen’s definitive essay, leaving aside his endorsement of the Iraqi television program, Terrorism in the Grip of Justice, which broadcasts the confessions of captured insurgents. Hitchens acknowledges that there might be a little rough business behind the program: “Some of the confessions, such as one from an alleged Syrian intelligence officer who said that the insurgency was run by Syria, are a little too convenient. And the possibility exists that other confessions are either staged or coerced.” Stageged or coerced? A little too convenient? A.K. Gupta over at Common Dreams is a little more specific:

The show [Terrorism in the Grip of Justice] features an unseen interrogator haranguing alleged insurgents for confessions. Virtually every press account notes that the suspects appear to have been beaten or tortured, their faces bruised and swollen. The London Guardian states "some have robotic manners of those beaten and coached by police interrogators off-camera." The Boston Globe observed, "The neat confessions of terrorist attacks at times fit together so seamlessly as to seem implausible." And then there's the nature of the confessions. Many suspects admit to "drunkeness, gay orgies and pornography," according to the Guardian. The Financial Times reported that, "One long-bearded preacher known as Abu Tabarek recently confessed that guerrillas had usually held orgies in his mosques." Another preacher giving a confession says he was fired for "having sex with men in the mosque," the Globe account stated that suspects "frequently admit to rape and pedophilia." (emphasis added)

One wonders what is takes to make a Muslim cleric confess to 'gay orgies' in a mosque. All this doesn’t dissuade Hitchens from supporting this blantantly sick project however:

Terrorism in the Grip of Justice could only be shown once the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government had been made. The United States could not have put any of these people on television, because the Geneva Conventions forbid the exhibiting of prisoners. (I don't know what the law would say about showing the program on U.S. television, and in any case the video-beheadings recorded by the captured perpetrators would be too hideous for mass consumption.) In my opinion, at any rate, the elected Iraqi authorities are well within their rights in using this means of propaganda. Indeed, they are entitled to all the presumptions of a war of self-defense.

So just who is behind Terrorism in the Grip of Justice? From the May 1 issue of The NYTimes Magazine (archive), in a great article by Peter Maas we meet Gen. Adnan Thabit:

In a country of tough guys, Adnan Thabit may be the toughest of all. He was both a general and a death-row prisoner under Saddam Hussein. . . . .

Now people like Adnan, a former Baathist, have been given the task of defeating the insurgency. The new strategy is showing signs of success, but it is a success that may carry its own costs.
A couple of hours after Adnan issued his AK-47 threat, I sat with him watching TV. This was business, not pleasure. The program we were watching was Adnan's brainchild, and in just a few months it had proved to be one of the most effective psychological operations of the war. It is reality TV of sorts, a show called ''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice.'' It features detainees confessing to various crimes. . . . .

Of course, propaganda need not be wholly accurate to be effective. The real problem with the program, according to its most vocal critics -- representatives of human rights groups -- is that it violates the Geneva Conventions. The detainees shown on ''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice'' have not been charged before judicial authorities, and they appear to be confessing under duress. Some detainees are cut and bruised. In one show, a former policeman with two black eyes confessed to killing two police officers in Samarra; a few days after the broadcast, the former policeman's family told reporters, his corpse was delivered to them. The government's human rights minister has initiated an investigation.

''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice'' is a ratings success because it humiliates the insurgency, satisfying a popular desire for vengeance against the men who spread terror and death. Yet the program plays rough not only with its confessing captives but also with the rules and laws that govern the conduct of war. As I learned in Samarra, this approach was not just for television. It was Adnan's effective yet brutal way of conducting a counterinsurgency.” (emphasis added)

What Hitchens is supporting, in this increasingly dirty war, is the matching of barbarity with barbarity. He frankly acknowledges that this brutal program is nothing that could ever fly in America, which has signed on the Geneva Conventions, but argues that it is perfectly appropriate for a Middle Eastern country unfettered by such niceties. So much for the dream of a liberal and just Iraq. Perhaps there is a double entendre in Hitchens “Confessions of Dangerous Mind” a self-reference more anguished than sly, for he is now openly endorsing a program of coerced confessions conceived by a Sunni, ex-Baathist General (of Saddam’s military intelligence?), who presently leads former Republican Guards in a vicious paramilitary known for human rights abuses. Even if he is unaware of its authorship, it is the content, the political answer of this program that Hitchens applauds: a terror video of one’s own.

Fox News Exchange on "Gulags"

Exchange between Chris Wallace and William Schulz of Amnesty:

WALLACE: Mr. Schulz, the Soviet gulag was a system of slave labor camps that went on for more than 30 years. More than 1.6 million deaths were documented. Whatever has happened at Guantanamo, do you stand by the comparison to the Soviet gulag?

SCHULZ: Well, Chris, clearly this is not an exact or a literal analogy. And the secretary general has acknowledged that.

There's no question. But what in size and in duration, there are not similarities between U.S. detention facilities and the gulag. People are not being starved in those facilities. They're not being subjected to forced labor.

But there are some similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared -- held in indefinite incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families. And in some cases, at least, we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed.

Talabani: There is Little Debate

Morgan in the post below, has challenged me to explain:

From what I can tell, and I'm dealing with imperfect information here, Talabani is the one best positioned on the Kurdish side to attempt to make this transition. My friendly challenge to AK is for him to explain why that isn't the case, and who he thinks is better positioned to play that role.

First off I’m not accepting the debate entirely on Morgan’s terms. My assertion is somewhat different from Morgan’s rather awkward formulation: not that Talabani is not the best politician to represent Kurdish interests, but that Talabani is the wrong man to be President of Iraq. My informed suspicion is that he places sectarian interests, primarily Kurdish, above those of the Iraqi nation and this cynical view of his politics is well supported by his endorsement of violent, non-governmental militia and his repeated calls to ethnically divide the city of Kirkuk in favor of the Kurds. As to who could better fill his federal position I’ve little idea, for I’m no where near as impressed by Iraqi politicians as Morgan has been time and again (e.g. the con-man Chalabi and the thuggish Allawi). Aside perhaps from Hussain Shahristani, who doesn’t have a political base, it is not my place to nominate a replacement, only to say that the current office holder is a very poor choice with invidious results.

According to Morgan’s (unlinked) quote from Talabani, the Kurdish leader defends his Kurdish militia (the peshmerga) forces thusly:

We can depend on this militia for a while, then send them to the army or back to their jobs. But at a time when we are need them, when our enemies are using everything against us, why we must not use all these people against them?

Why? Because they are not under a unified, military chain of command, nor a military code of behaviour (however loose that maybe!). The state does not order these militia into action for the best interest of the nation, but ethnic commanders do, and the brutal actions they undertake are very sectarian and divisive. Here’s what Talabani’s peshmerga militia has been up to recently, according to the Washington Post, in an article entitled: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abudctions in Kirkuk:

Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims.

Seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint U.S.-Iraqi raids, the men have been transferred secretly and in violation of Iraqi law to prisons in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. forces. The detainees, including merchants, members of tribal families and soldiers, have often remained missing for months; some have been tortured, according to released prisoners and the Kirkuk police chief.

A confidential State Department cable, obtained by The Washington Post and addressed to the White House, Pentagon and U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the "extra-judicial detentions" were part of a "concerted and widespread initiative" by Kurdish political parties "to exercise authority in Kirkuk in an increasingly provocative manner."

The abductions have "greatly exacerbated tensions along purely ethnic lines" and endangered U.S. credibility, the nine-page cable, dated June 5, stated. "Turkmen in Kirkuk tell us they perceive a U.S. tolerance for the practice while Arabs in Kirkuk believe Coalition Forces are directly responsible." (emphasis added)

Do I really need to emphasize to Morgan that sweeping the streets in Kirkuk of Sunni Arabs is bad for the nation of Iraq as a whole? And what of the Badr Brigades, the other sectarian militia that Talabani has collaborated to let loose upon Iraq. What has this Iranian trained Shiite militia been up to:

A militant Shiite Muslim group with close ties to Iran has gained enormous power since Iraq's January elections and now is accused of conducting a terror campaign against Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority that includes kidnappings, threats and murders.

But in spite of concern among Sunni Arabs that the Badr Brigade is behind a series of brutal attacks against Sunni clerics, including cases where victims appear to have been tortured with electric drills, the group was praised by top Iraqi government officials on Wednesday.

"Today, there is a sacred mission of sweeping away the remnants of the dictatorship and defeating the terrorism, and your role with your brothers in the (Kurdish militia) is required and necessary to fulfill this sacred mission," Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, told a meeting of Badr members. (emphasis added)

Now I don’t know if the Badr brigades really are running around drilling holes in Sunni clerics, but if they are, what recourse would there be to rein them in? Under a military command, such gross violations of conduct could be brought up on criminal charges, while a free-roaming and extra-legal militia has no such constraints. (Which could very well be why Shiite and Kurdish leaders have used them for dirty work and collective punishment). Should Iraqi militiamen in the peshmerga or Badr brigades wish to serve their nation THEY SHOULD JOIN THE ARMY and serve under a chain of command that is responsible to military law and the state. That is the way Talabani could “use all these people against them” and this simple step should be painfully obvious for Morgan as well.

It is for exactly these sorts of reasons that the Iraqi Assembly, according to Iraq the Model, voted to dismantle the milita, advice that Talabani ignored. Morgan should ask himself why the Iraqi Assembly, with many members from Kurdish and Shiite parties, are so bravely willing to put there faith in the army and their fear in the militias.

Morgan continues the debate with a fatuous swipe:

And though AK has tried to smear Talabani for having met with Saddam during the days of the no-fly zone, it was Barazani who actually teamed up with Saddam military forces in an attempt to control Kurdistan.

Morgan here is terribly confused and just outright wrong. Talabani and Barzani both met with and kissed Saddam in ’91 after the first Gulf War, Barazani then linked up with Saddam again in ’96 against Talabani. It is no smear to say that Talabani met with Saddam, it happened and I detail my thoughts on the matter here.

Here are Talabani’s own words on his dealings with Saddam, a relationship that he renewed multiple times when he thought necessary:

At what point did you become convinced that Saddam was not somebody you could deal with?

It depends on the time. When he is in need of us, he will be ready to deal with us. When he is in a strong position, he is not ready to listen to us. In 1991 when he was defeated in the Gulf, he asked us to come, and when I went there he kissed, etc.and said, 'you are very much welcomed and you have come again, you proved that you are patriots.' ... That time he needed us.

And here is a picture of that meeting.

Lastly, Morgan writes of Talabani’s reluctance to dismantle the peshmerga:

Problematic, debatable, but not insane or the ravings of an ultra-nationalist simply trying to win Kurdish independence. And that is another point. Talabani is no angel, neither are the other members of the new government. But they do seem, to me, to represent just about the best hope for shaping a new democratic Iraqi political reality and as such I'm willing always to give them the benefit of the doubt before assuming their bad motivation.

OK, then, let’s talk about Kirkuk for there the “motivation” appears quite clear. Talabani has not been subtle in his desire to ethnically partition the multiethnic city of Kirkuk. What, after all, are the Kurds’ “claims” to the city of Kirkuk which Talabani has been so vehemently articulating? Aren’t the peshmerga, as evidenced above by the Washington Post story, beginning to assert those very claims through extra-legal abductions and torture? Despite multiple invitations to address it, Morgan has simply taken a pass on this tremendously important issue. Speak up man! When so many political factions are distrustful of Kurdish nationalism, Talabani’s hard-line stance on Kirkuk brings into sharp focus his “ultra-nationalist” goals over the unity of the nation. This narrow, tribal tendency should be decried sharply, along with unleashing militia upon the Iraqi population. Even the U.S. government and military have protested against the insidious deployement of Iraqi militia and their nefarious activities such as abductions and torture in Kirkuk. What are you waiting for Morgan?

Debating Iraq: Talabani

An older debate between AK and I has flared up again around Talabani's recent defense of the Peshmerga and the Badr brigades against those who call for their immediate disbanding. For AK, this is further proof that Talabani is not serious about a unified Iraq and that sectarian forces are now essentially in charge of the Iraqi government. I disagree for a couple of reasons.

But first let it be said that the militias are not a good thing in and of themselves. Obviously, in a truly healthy government you don't have armed militias running around. So, the question is not whether to disband the militias, but when. And in this, I take Talabani and SCIRI and others to have a fairly pragmatic position. When the CPA was in charge, there was an immediate push to disband the militias and to put security in the hands of the new national army. But, as we've all seen, that was based on wildly optimistic scenarios about the strength of the insurgency, the level of training of the new troops, political cohesion, etc. Inevitably, Kurdish and Shia leaders ignored the calls and frankly, in their position I would have done the same. Let's use an analogy: it is certainly the case that Hamas can't be a separate army for an independent Palestine to be healthy and functioning. However, it would be a rather imprudent political move to talk about disbanding Hamas as an armed force right now. Essentially the same thing is true of Iraq. The possibility of disbanding the Peshmerga and Badr will be an achievment gained through a process of political stabilization that will take years. Talking about doing it now seems to me to be putting a political burden on the new government that is unrealistic to the extreme. This is what Talabani has to say about the matter:

In my opinion, Iraqi forces, the popular forces and government forces, are now ready to end the insurgency and this terrorism. But there is a kind of thinking inside the government, the outgoing government, that they must not use the popular forces, they must not benefit for example from the Peshmerga, from Badr, from the armed forces of former Iraqi opposition parties. Otherwise we have enough force to eradicate the terrorists, but they don't want to...
For example, we have many times proposed to the government that Peshmerga are ready to secure the oil of Iraq from Kirkuk to the border. They didn't agree, because
they said, ah, these are Peshmerga, they are not government forces. In the south, the same. Many times in this area of Latifiya and others, Badr was ready to eradicate terrorism and to clean the area from them. But they said no.
If we depend only on the Iraqi security police and security forces, I think it needs time to train them, because in the beginning it was taken in a very wrong way. They gathered the people, regardless of their loyalty to democracy, to the new regime, and thousands and thousands of others, from pro-Saddam elements, from Baathists, and they didn't fight when they were facing the terrorists, they laid down their arms, escaping and going back home.
If we were planning to have a real security force from those who are believing in the democratic process, in the new regime, it's easy to eradicate these terrorist groups,
because it seems to me that they are not so strong. Those who were arrested and then came to confess on the television, many of them were paid, some of them were not even real Muslims when they came to fight in the name of Islam. . .
In any place in the world, when the country is facing difficulties, beside the army, the people depended on the militias and the partisan groups. Look at the Second World War, the Red Army in Russia depended on the partisans; in France, in Italy, Allied forces, the Americans and British, depended on the popular forces who were fighting fascists.
We can depend on this militia for a while, then send them to the army or back to their jobs. But at a time when we are need them, when our enemies are using everything against us, why we must not use all these people against them?

Problematic, debatable, but not insane or the ravings of an ultra-nationalist simply trying to win Kurdish independence. And that is another point. Talabani is no angel, neither are the other members of the new government. But they do seem, to me, to represent just about the best hope for shaping a new democratic Iraqi political reality and as such I'm willing always to give them the benefit of the doubt before assuming their bad motivation. Talabani has said over and over again that the days when Kurds hoped for real independence are over and that a new political reality is going to have to infuse Kurdish discourse. I'm prepared to accept that he means it. I don't think he accepted the post of President of Iraq as a trick. But we also have to remember that he has to defend himself on his political flank from the much more extreme Kurdish nationalist in Barzani. And though AK has tried to smear Talabani for having met with Saddam during the days of the no-fly zone, it was Barazani who actually teamed up with Saddam military forces in an attempt to control Kurdistan. Here's Kanan Makiya's discussion of the matter from 1996:

The tensions between the two main Kurdish factions date back to Talabani's split
from Mulla Mustafa Barzani's KDP during the 1970s. The hostility between them
was not so much ideological as historical, sociological, and, increasingly,
personal. Talabani is a skillful urban politician who has attracted young,
educated Kurds, and he has built up an organization with strong connections to
the Kurdish intelligentsia, particularly in the second largest Kurdish city,
Sulaymaniyya, located fifty miles from the Iranian-Iraqi border. Barzani's
organization, on the other hand, is based on the rural clans of the mountainous
countryside, especially those along the Iraqi-Turkish border. These were serious
differences, but it was possible for both groups to smooth them over, as they
did during the elections of 1992 and the years that followed.

So Talabani has to move carefully and with tact and skill. He must gesture to the dreams of independent Kurdistan while trying to transform those hopes into a new reality for the Kurds in which their hopes and dreams are tied to the greater national realities of Iraqi politics. As Talabani has said:

Dream is one thing, reality another one. The Kurds voted in majority for
our list, which asks a federation in the framework of Iraq and not independence.
Like any other people, they want the right to self-determination. But,
confronted with reality, they understand that it is not possible. Because even
if our neighbors do not attack us they have only to close their borders, and
independent Kurdistan could not survive.

From what I can tell, and I'm dealing with imperfect information here, Talabani is the one best positioned on the Kurdish side to attempt to make this transition. My friendly challenge to AK is for him to explain why that isn't the case, and who he thinks is better positioned to play that role.

Chatter

I've been less than prolific on my Idle Chatter column at Old Town Review but that should change over the next couple of months (for the seven or eight of you who care). I've a new post today about Tim Hawkinson, who recently had a big solo exhibit at The Whitney.

Hawkinson makes big billowing swagamuds and they wizzle and cahumpher. He tingles with little lingpingers that citchel and citchel until they've completed a full cycle. That's to say, he's interested in the way things work. He is at home with mechanical things. He treats them as human. He is an anti-Ludite. He isn't interested in protecting the human from the machine, he is interested in the ways that humanness and machineness overlap and intersect and make other interesting things.

Apolitical Politics Revisited Again

There was a very interesting discussion between Steven and Robin a week or so ago that culminated in Steven's post here, with comments by Robin. The gist of the debate was around the question of whether one could really uphold a politics of liberal intervention that wouldn't become a complete tool of power politics. Steven is pretty sure it is impossible. Robin thinks the problem is made more complicated by the fact that the only real resistance to it on the other side has seen hard leftists allying with various forms of fascist.

I'd like to revisit one of Steven's points with a clarification. Steven wrote that:

What we must recognize is that in America the political (interests and
power) often (usually) works itself out in the language of liberalism (the only
exceptions were Nixon and Bush I). This does not mean that the agents using this
language do not mean it. The Bushies surely want freedom and democracy for Iraq,
but for them this also meant installing Chalabi as a ruler from the outside. The
Bushies want democracy and freedom for the Middle East (at least what they
understand by these terms), but they also want to dominate the region. This is
an objective contradiction, not one that can be pined on a corrupt and phony
individual will.

This is a completely fair point and goes along with his claim that many on the so-called Interventionist Left simply fell for nice sounding talk and abandoned their critical faculties. But there were those (like myself and Robin, though he never supported the war in the way I did) who saw the problem a little bit differently. For us, the interesting thing was not exactly that Bush started using the language of freedom and democracy. As Steven says, nearly every American politician does that. We'd heard the same shit, mutatis mutandis, about Vietnam and what a load that was.

What was different and what perked up the ears, as it were, of various 'hard headed' Lefties was the stated idea that it is now in the interest of the United States as a nation state seeking power not to support tyrannies and dictators anymore. None of the neo-cons in the administration, for instance, are shy about the idea that they think the US should be the most powerful country in the world. But what they've argued is that part and parcel of that power is not playing the "I support this dictator because he's our dictator" form of foreign policy. In this, there was even an implicit critique of the Reagan years when, for instance, the Cold War was a good enough excuse to support any monster who claimed to fight communism. There has been an element of the Bush administration that has pushed hard for a revaluation along these lines and there seems to be pretty good evidence that they mean it, which is to say that it has actually affected policy.

Now, in a somewhat similar way as Robin, I always thought this should be seen as an opportunity for the Left. "Yes," the Left could have said, "we've been trying to tell you that for years, now let's get serious about it." Instead, the Left split into a couple of factions, one which could be said to have been entirely too credulous about American power and another that ignored the opportunity in the name of a more traditional anti-imperialism.

As someone who has no interest in the proposition that America should be the world's power in perpetuity, the idea that any foreign policy position from the Bush administration could have positive elements was a tricky business. And obviously, just because that basic idea that the US shouldn't support dictators sounds good doesn't mean that outright military intervention is a useful tool of that policy shift. So far, Iraq and to a lesser degree Afghanistan are a good argument that that isn't the case and that opposing dictators doesn't work very well as a military idea. But if we agree that the US is a major power and that it is going to have some kind of foreign policy, than we still have to think about what that should be. This is something that some figures on the Left have taken pretty seriously and, I would argue, have been talking about something more complicated and sophisticated than simply idea that 'Bush say freedom, Bush mean freedom'. It is, instead, about seeing contingent historical opportunities in a complex political world and taking advantage of them.

Conservatives Clash Over Gitmo

If your fascinated by divisions within the American Right like many of us here at OTR are, this Fox News Sunday footage (courtesy of Crooks and Liars) is absolute gold. The televised argument was over the growing movement among conservatives and within the Bush administration to close the Guantanamo detention facility, and Brit Hume reveals himself to be every bit the troglodyte tool, following his GOP talking points well after they've led him into an untenable and sick position. Bill Kristol takes him on with real anger and argues not just from a PR basis, citing the international damage done to the U.S.'s reputation, but also from a legalistic one.

"Freedom Fries" Go Stale: GOP Revolt Over Iraq

Looks like President Bush is suffering a revolt within his right-wing:

A Republican congressman called for a deadline to pull U.S. troops from Iraq, while some other members of President Bush's party urged on Sunday that his administration come to grips with a persistent insurgency and revamp Iraq policy.

Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina conservative, said on ABC's "This Week" that he would offer legislation this week setting a timetable for the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
"I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, and I feel that we've done about as much as we can do," said Jones, who coined the phrase "freedom fries" to lash out at the French for opposing the Iraq invasion. (emphasis added)

Given the present political realities in Congress, I don’t think such “timetable” legislation will have much of a chance. I can’t imagine that Rep. Jones has the military and political savvy to set statistical goals or hard dates to convince his congressional allies and the administration to pull out. A withdrawal, at this stage of the conflict, would more likely be based on qualitative goals than a constraining timeline. But what of the political damage in bucking the President and admitting that this conflict is sinking towards a quagmire? Doesn’t this questioning of the justifications for the war and hardline of critique undercut Jones’s own conservative base? Isn’t there a heavy implication of guilt and criminal negligence in his charges? Fear not, for real conservatives were not “primarily” to blame:

Jones, a member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said "primarily the neoconservatives" in the administration were to blame for flawed war planning.
"The reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there," he said. (emphasis added)

Let’s see if this “blame the neocons” strategy has any legs within Republican circles, and how the neocon publication, The Weekly Standard responds. Joining the growing chorus of conservative lamentations in Rep. Curt Weldon, who warns darkly not just of Syria, but of Iranian influence in Iraq:

Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who just returned from Iraq, joined several Democrats saying the administration must be more candid and acknowledge that it could take about two years to train Iraqi forces to replace U.S. soldiers and allow a significant pullout. . . . .

Weldon also said the administration must "come to grips" with a rising insurgency, boosted by fighters from Syria and Iran, "which for some reason our intelligence community does not want to acknowledge or deal with."

Weldon said he heard "a common theme" in Iraq that the largest number of foreign insurgents may be coming from Syria, but that "Iran overwhelmingly has the quality behind the insurgency."

Well isn’t that interesting! In identifying Iran as the “quality behind the insurgency” does Weldon mean the Badr brigades, the Iranian trained militia now sanctioned by the Iraqi state (see previous entry)? Or Moqtada al-Sadr, who has found a comfortable role within the present Shiite dominated government? Maybe congressional Republican’s are slowly waking up to the sorts of anti-American Islamist elements that have found various niches and functions with present day “democratic” Iraq.

Dismantle the Militia

For those delusional enough to claim that sanctioning ethnic militia in Iraq instead of dismantling them is a good idea, Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder has the following accounts of how the Badr Bigades, a Shiite militia trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, is perceived by Sunni Arabs in Iraq:

A militant Shiite Muslim group with close ties to Iran has gained enormous power since Iraq's January elections and now is accused of conducting a terror campaign against Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority that includes kidnappings, threats and murders.

But in spite of concern among Sunni Arabs that the Badr Brigade is behind a series of brutal attacks against Sunni clerics, including cases where victims appear to have been tortured with electric drills, the group was praised by top Iraqi government officials on Wednesday.

Electric drills? Subtle. In a dramatically under-reported facet of this depressing drama, Iraq-the-Model, citing Local Iraqi papers as a source, has blogged that a majority the Iraqi National Assembly bravely voted to dismantle militias -- many defying their own party affiliation to do so. If I get this timeline right, the Assembly voted against maintaining the militias on June 6th, and in response, President Talabani, Prime Minister Jaafari and the SCIRI cleric Hakim blatantly ignore this very sound and democratic advice the following day. It is frightening when these political leaders make such ethnically biased judgments at the cost of national unity and the centralized control of Iraqi armed forces. Sarbina Tavernese and John Burns, reporting in today’s NYTimes, write that even with the emergence of a few better trained Iraqi battalions, the command and control apparatus for the formal Iraqi military is still lacking.

. . . . At the highest levels of the American command, and at the Pentagon, there has been growing unease about the reliance on meeting statistical targets without, many officers say, a corresponding emphasis on the quality of the troops moving into the field, on the command abilities of their officers and on the communications networks that will let Iraqi units coordinate their operations and communicate with other units.

One of the Americans who has made his frustrations known is Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, who has pushed for greater efforts to build up the command abilities of the new forces, at every level from company commanders to generals.

On some occasions, American officers say, General Casey, normally affable, has barked his exasperation over the issue, saying that having new divisions of Iraqi troops means little unless the troops "are connected to something," meaning an effective command-and-control network.

What if Shiite and Kurdish leaders on the national stage like Hakim and Talabani prefer to be “connected” to their own miltias instead of strengthening and utilizing the officer corps of the official force? Keeping the Kurdish peshmerga and the Badr brigades intact explicitly condones a competing command structure answerable to sectarian interests, a deliberately divisive move in defiance of the National Assembly and the best interest of the nation as a whole.

Tale of an Unquiet American

Reminiscent of Neil Sheehan’s masterpiece on Vietnam, A Bright and Shining Lie, Aram Roston’s article The Unquiet American also employs an American life in a warzone as a metaphor for a larger conflict: one that vacillates crazily from optimism to frustration and at the end reveals itself to have been woefully out of its depth. Stoffel’s brief career in Iraq managed to entwine with the strange nexus that is Ahmad Chalabi, and his work and dealings with arms dealers, the Pentagon and K Street lobbyists give this story a breadth as revealing as it is depressing.

Two days later, Stoffel's car was discovered in a grim neighborhood along the Tigris. The hood was crumpled like a paper bag, the windshield a haze of cracks. The dashboard was covered with blood. Stoffel had been shot repeatedly in the head and upper back. His friend and employee, Joe Wemple, had been shot once through the head.

A mysterious insurgent group has claimed credit for Stoffel's killing; another terrorist group celebrated the murder and called him an American spy. His friends, though, aren't convinced that this was just another act of violence by militants in Iraq, and neither, apparently, is the FBI, which is now investigating his death. In the chaos of Iraq, it's likely that no one will ever know for sure why Dale Stoffel was murdered.

What does become clear, from dozens of interviews with people who knew Stoffel and from documents that detail his work, is that Dale Stoffel's life—and death—was a version, in miniature, of the American occupation itself. His personality, with its mix of idealism, ideology, and self-interest, mirrored those of the senior administration staff and young officials who manned the American headquarters in Iraq. Stoffel and these administration officials shared a belief that they were clever enough, tough enough, and committed enough to impose their will on a dangerous land through the use of key Iraqi insiders. But, in the end, their Iraqi friends used them.

Debt Relief for Africa

The US and Britain say that they've reached an agreement on providing debt relief to Africa which they can unveil at the G8 meeting this week. This is all to the good, and especially since, meanwhile, UK Chancellor Gordon Brown has been working on an arrangement with the other G7 countries to relieve international debt for some highly-indebted countries, most of them in Africa, that the treasury claims will equal 40 billion dollars.

However, many advocates for debt relief say neither of these proposals go far enough to make a crucial difference. They say that neither plan provide enough debt relief to make the crucial difference, and especially criticise the Bush-Blair agreement for leaving out debt poor countries owe to the IMF. According to the campaign-group World Development Movement

Brown's initiative is currently for about 23 countries that are eligible for debt relief, but research shows at least 52 poor countries need 100% debt cancellation

On the other side of the question, some critics have also wondered whether Gordon Browns approach of a Marshall plan for Africa is a realistic approach to African poverty. In the Guardian, last week, Martin Kettle asks

[I]s lack of capital Africa's real problem? Many say emphatically no. Africa has 100,000 millionaires. Pointing out that every African alive today has received roughly $5,000 in aid, Richard Dowden of the Royal Africa Society argues that "if aid were the solution to Africa's problems it would be a rich continent by now". And a truly devastating critique of Brown's approach by Ian Taylor in the March 2005 issue of International Affairs argues that "his lack of knowledge about Africa has meant that he has latched on to the simple - but wrong - solutions". Calls for a Marshall plan for Africa ignore the fact that Africa has already received the equivalent of six Marshall plans in cash terms. Taylor calls such prescriptions "more headline grabbing than well thought through".

Read the rest of Kettle's article here.

Secret Wars and Old War Crimes

Survivors of a U.S. spy ship attacked by Israeli fighters and torpedo boats 40 years ago are pressing the Pentagon for a full investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes for a strike that caused 205 casualties, including 34 killed. The attack on the USS Liberty occurred in international waters during the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel, Egypt and other Arab nations. The survivors claim the attack itself was a violation of the Geneva Conventions regulating conduct of war and that further crimes occurred when Israeli sailors fired at rescuers and firefighters on the ship's bullet-riddled deck and into rubber life rafts thrown into the water to pick up survivors.

From an AP feed at Military.com.

James Bamford's book on the NSA suggests that the Liberty was a secret NSA ship and that the attacking planes were unmarked jets which had a clear view of the U.S. flag aboard. At the time, the IDF was carrying out a massacre of prisoners nearby on shore and Bamford thinks that the Liberty was attacked to cover up the crime. The story of how the ship was dragged back to port is a great tale of epic naval heroism.

Madrid Conference Publishes on Terrorism and Democracy

The First Volume deals with the Causes of Terrorism, including its psychological roots as well as political, economic, religious, and cultural factors. The Second Volume is on Confronting Terrorism and deals with policing, intelligence, military responses, terrorist finance, and science and technology.The Third Volume concentrates on a "Democratic Response" to terrorism including the role of international institutions, legal responses, democracy promotion, human rights and civil society.

More here from Victor Comras of the Counterterrorism Blog.

Iraqi Militias

In a dumb and divisive action guaranteed to undercut centralized control of military forces in Iraq, three key Iraqi leaders have decided to play sectarian politics over the best interest of the nation:

In a move certain to further inflame sectarian tensions with Sunni Arabs, the country's top leaders said today that they strongly supported the existence of an Iranian-trained Shiite militia and praised the militia's role in trying to secure the country.

It was the first time the new Iraqi government has publicly backed an armed group that was created along sectarian lines, and it was an implicit rejection of repeated requests by American officials that the government disband all militias in the country. . . . .

The remarks supporting the Shiite militia were made in the morning at an unusual news conference whose speakers included Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Iraqi prime minister and a Shiite Arab; Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president and a militia leader himself, and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Shiite political party that created the Shiite militia, known as the Badr Organization.

In recent weeks, some Sunni Arab leaders have vociferously blamed the Badr militia for the murders of prominent Sunni clerics and others. Among the Badr's harshest critics is Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a powerful group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques.

Indeed, from the time the Badr militia entered Iraq from Iran during the American-led invasion, Sunnis have blamed Badr fighters for assassinations across the country, especially the killings of former Baath Party officials.

And if there is any question as to who will be controlling these militia (later version of Edward Wong’s article):

Iraqi officials say the militias will be placed under the nominal control of the Defense and Interior Ministries. Kurdish leaders have consistently made clear, however, that the pesh merga will actually remain under the command of the Kurdistan regional government and, for all practical purposes, will be independent of the central government.

In supporting the sort of narrow, sectarian interests that undercut a national defense apparatus with centralized control of the military, Jalal Talabani has proved himself a poor leader for Iraq. As I warned of here, his byzantine history hints that he is first and foremost a Kurdish leader, and his continuing reliance on the pesh merga and advocacy for the ethnic division of the multiethnic city of Kirkuk spell bad tidings for the nation as a whole.

Edward Wong’s article also discusses this troubling development:

Top Sunni Arab leaders also demanded that a 55-member committee that is to begin writing a new constitution add at least 25 Sunni seats with full voting powers. There was no immediate response from the Shiite-led committee, but in recent days its members have proposed adding 12 to 15 nonvoting seats for Sunni Arabs.

The demand for 25 seats is completely unreasonable, a chunk of representation out of proportion with the actual size of the Sunni population. Unfortunately, this demand shows that the funny ethnographic math among Sunni “moderates” is not just limited to a few Sunni political crackpots like Fahkri al-Qaisi.

Exxon influenced Bush on Climate Change

According to the Guardian , leaked US State Department papers reveal that Bush asked Exxon to help determine the US stance on Kyoto:

In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.

Read the rest of this article here.

An Apolitical Politics Revisited

In this post I would like to respond to Robin Varghese' provocative and interesting comments concerning my post An Apolitical Politics. Robin Said:

It seems that the problem that many have with with the "remaking the middle east project" is twofold. One is the belief that with instances of regime change such as in Iraq, it had to come from within; the pro-war camp's response is that it was never going to happen given the balance of forces, and since no Ba'ath version of Gorbachev was in sight--it seemed more like a Ba'ath version of Kim Jong Il or Ceaucescu or Idi Amin.

The other is not so much with the idea of a democratic middle east and fostering it, but rather the belief that those who are pushing it are lying about wanting it. In this case, it is not that politics is managerial but that it's Machiavellian. Here, the image is of ideology as a smoke screen behind which narrow interests operate. People who buy it are deluded.

The point that the Bush administration's politics is Machiavellian (on this interpretation) rather then managerial is correct. My understanding of Machiavellian is a bit different then yours however. I don’t think there is an absolute split between ‘values’ (or ideology) and interests insofar as policy makers view interests through their values (which is not to say that there in never a disjunction between the two). What we must recognize is that in America the political (interests and power) often (usually) works itself out in the language of liberalism (the only exceptions were Nixon and Bush I). This does not mean that the agents using this language do not mean it. The Bushies surely want freedom and democracy for Iraq, but for them this also meant installing Chalabi as a ruler from the outside. The Bushies want democracy and freedom for the Middle East (at least what they understand by these terms), but they also want to dominate the region. This is an objective contradiction, not one that can be pined on a corrupt and phony individual will.

As far as the people (Like Ikenberry) who think that there is a new (salutary) ideology at play in American foreign policy thinking, all I can say is that they are historically ignorant. We have for quite some time taken our interests to be the interests of mankind, and we have for qui