And now the third in a series of short posts–an unprecedented attack of brevity for me!
I’ve been saying “Iran” over and over again as the war in Iraq was first contemplated and then executed. An article today in the Washington Post talks about the influence of Iran and the fears, entirely justified in my view, of various regimes in the area on this matter. I think this article is quite enlightening.
Support for the Iraq war has been largely characterized as a liberal-conservative debate, with lots of negative adjectives attached to each political stream. Supporters are supposedly patriots who support using our military to defend our innocent citizens while opponents are portrayed as weak folks whose only desire is to surrender. There are, however, quite a number of other approaches that have been drowned out in the rhetoric used on both sides.
I believe the war to be a strategic mistake. Even if the war were justified in a vacuum, in the context of the middle east as it really exists, as opposed to the way it’s perceived by some folks in Washington, the war cannot come to a favorable, long-term conclusion.
N. T. Wright is an evangelical theologian, one who believes in the concept of a “just war,” yet he does not believe this war was justified. He gives it less favorable reviews than I do, and I think adds some excellent reasons. I suggest reading his post at World Needs A Strong United Nations, a column on the Washington Post site.
Hat tip: Catching Meddlers.
Ben Witherington has a good post today about political deception with a brief intro on parthenogenesis. On the latter, I would simply note that I see no particular benefit to Christianity in proving that a virgin birth is possible. The value of the doctrine stems at least in part from the fact that it is not possible, and thus, if it happened, it was a miracle.
The other portion is certainly worth reading. His comments on his interview on the O’Reilly Factor are quite interesting. The only thing I have to add is that liberals are equally capable of such shenanigans, and that we should decry them wherever and by whomever they are perpetrated.
Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are both tied to the formation of a new umbrella group of Baptist denominations in an article in the Washington Post. I should point out what could easily be missed–Clinton described himself as a cheerleader and refused to be interviewed. Carter is apparently more involved. This is not the formation of a new denomination, but more of an alliance of denominations that want to see a different definition of “Baptist” than is presented by the Southern Baptist convention.
Though I’m Methodist and have no plans to become Baptist, I certainly would welcome such an organization simply because the voice of the large number of members represented by the individual denominations is often not heard. In addition, if successful, the organization will combine the voice of predominantly African-American denominations with that of predominantly white ones.
One of the issues that is bound to catch the eye of the press at least, is the fact that two former Democratic presidents are involved. It certainly caught the attention of the Washington Post writer. These churches should be careful not to get tagged with a political label any more than they must. While having former Democratic presidents involved in any way increases the political visibility, I would certainly not suggest they reject such involvement. I believe in separation of church and state, not church and statesman, and certainly not church and ex-Presidents.
MSNBC.com has a good story on scientists and evangelical Christians working together on the environment. This is a very welcome alliance.
This isn’t a matter of anyone compromising on their principles, but rather an alliance for action on issues on which both sides can agree.
In all the debates about winning or losing the war in Iraq, what I find extremely frustrating is that the discussion so often occurs without adequate context. Today Joe Carter writes about How We Lost the War (And Will Lose the Next One Too). I agree with many of his comments about American public opinion, but I think he also displays the dangerous tendency that Americans have to simply not think about the context of other countries, from the leadership on down.
Carter presents his rather excellent argument which is quite logical in a sterile sort of way. I even agree with the conclusion of his argument. Pulling out at this point cannot be painted as some sort of victory. It’s a loss. But in arguments the devil is often in the definitions, and there we have the real problem with this argument. Points #1 and #2:
(1) The object in war is to impose your will on your enemy.
(2) The will of our enemy is that we leave Iraq as soon as possible.
The enemy has a good idea what his will is, and what he wills is something that can potentially be accomplished. The American people, on the other hand, aided by mixed messages from their government, really never had any idea what their will was for Iraq. One could reverse the logic, and instead use our will as the standard, and our failure to impose that will means defeat. But the problem would be to discover just what our will was.
Here are some options:
Well, #1 was accomplished and should have been expected. From a tactical point of view, capture and execution of Saddam Hussein was an added benefit. (What the process did to overall strategy is worth consideration.) It turns out there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction to get rid of, so #2 is accomplished, in a way. There’s no evidence that Iraq was an above average base for terrorism. In fact, Afghanistan and Pakistan probably remain better bases, and terrorists don’t settle in for the long haul in one location, at least surviving terrorists don’t. The remaining items are either contradictory or simply impossible in some other way. Donald Stoker, quoted by Carter claiming that combatting an insurgency normally takes 8-11 years, provides an interesting base line. I have no reason to dispute his estimate.
But one aspect of context when one deals with the Middle East is time or perhaps timelessness. If you spend 8-11 years imposing peace, and you succeed, you still have no assurance–or better not even a probability–that the imposed peace will last once you withdraw. Feuds can go underground only to pop back up as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Notice that the chief image for U. S. involvement from the Arab side of this is the crusades, and they were fought hundreds of years ago. Iraqis can still think in terms of restoring the glory of Babylon, which takes it into millenia. Americans simply can’t fathom that kind of thinking as a rule.
But there is a substantial problem in Iraq. Assuming that we want a democratic government, which seems to be part of the strategy, there is simply no reason for anyone to assume we’re also going to get a government that is friendly. We are much more likely to get one that is more similar to Iran than anything else, and such a government is not going to be pluralistic in nature, but inevitably will tilt toward one center of power or another. Based on population, that would be a Shi’ite dominated government. At a minimum, such a government would no longer stand as a counter-balance to Iran in the region, and could very well become an Iranian ally.
If your will in a war is self-contradictory, then there is simply no formula for victory. I don’t blame the American people for losing this war. There was never any potential strategy for victory. The one thing that could have made any of it worth anything would have been the finding and elimination of weapons of mass destruction. The removal of Saddam Hussein is, without context, a good thing to do, but we’re not going to be any happier with a Shi’ite dominated government, which right now is the most likely accomplishment of this war. We’ll still have attrocities in Iraq; they’ll just be against a different group of people.
Now I’d advocate staying on the simple grounds that we’re responsible for the current version of the mess. But I don’t think that we can make it better for the long term. The Iraqi people are going to have to decide for themselves whether they are going to return to all of the ancient feuds or whether they are going to learn to work together. History indicates that without some substantial force, the disparate elements that were brought together to create Iraq are not likely to form a terribly stable and peaceful union.
Many people seem to believe that my opposition to the Iraq war is an oppostion to war, that I don’t want us to go after terrorists or find and capture Osama bin Laden. On the contrary, my opposition to the war in Iraq is precisely because it detracts from that very goal. It expends huge quantities of human and material resources for at best marginal benefits. It is as though a commander in a war attacked a fortress that would become isolated in a properly conducted war, and expended huge amounts of ammunition and numerous troops to reduce that fortress when it could be simply isolated and allowed to become irrelevant. If you further imagine a fortress that is simply not going to fall or will take up the same enormous resources to occupy, you have the strategic impact of Iraq on the war on terror. It doesn’t get us anywhere, and it expends troops that are more useful elsewhere.
But based on the polls and on the truly silly notions held by many people, I also have to agree with Joe Carter’s conclusion:
What is even more distressing than the fact that we have lost this war is that we are likely to lose the next one too. We have no interest in fighting in engagements that last longer than a season of 24. Given this reality our best option is simply to refuse to fight. Rather than engage in ‘pre-emptive wars’? we should take a page out of France’s strategic playbook and make a habit of ‘preemptive surrender.’?
I’m afraid that no matter how much I believe the war in Iraq was a mistake from pretty much any angle, there will be numerous conflicts that will be good ideas, and based on the polls and general reasoning, I’m afraid the American people won’t back those up. I am wondering whether the completion of the war in Afghanistan, making sure that the government can stand, that the country can remain free, and that terrorist operations there can be largely eliminated, would receive the continued support of the American people were the news media focused on that country instead of Iraq. And there we do have the possibility of accomplishing good things, and we already have.
Unfortunately, I think Joe Carter is right that we simply don’t have the staying power for such a conflict. He and I disagree on the Iraq war itself, but I think we would agree on the broader issue. The American people will only tolerate a conflict if the losses are minimal and don’t distress us. The potential strategic gains or losses don’t seem to matter. At the moment, I don’t think we even have the will to pay for and support the type of security we need to protect our homeland, much less to support operations worldwide for decades to come. The 8 to 11 year estimate is probably good, based on history. Understanding the middle east would suggest that the estimate is low for the type of conflict we’re in, and we need to be ready to stay the course for more than 8-11 years, and that each such war is merely a battle in the larger war on terrorism.
Attorney General Gonzales is apparently concerned that judges may make decisions about security issues that they are not qualified to understand. According to MSNBC:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says federal judges are unqualified to make rulings affecting national security policy, ramping up his criticism of how they handle terrorism cases.
Of course, the administration that brought us the Iraq war and FEMA run by a much-underqualified lawyer is qualified to tell us that no judge is qualified to hold them accountable. Ultimately this leads to the attitude that now pervades the Bush administration that even the voters cannot hold them accountable. In their view nobody is qualified to hold them accountable, because they just know.
In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday, Gonzales says judges generally should defer to the will of the president and Congress when deciding national security cases. He also raps jurists who “apply an activist philosophy that stretches the law to suit policy preferences.”
In other words, only the administration is qualified to stretch the law. Those judges should just keep out of it.
“We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected judiciary inferior to Congress or the president in making policy judgments,” Gonzales says in the prepared speech. “That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country.”
Following on some other really stupid remarks, this displays an astounding level of arrogance.
I should have known about this, but hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Today is National Religious Freedom Day. I wonder why there is not more publicity surrounding this.
Our freedom is a good thing to celebrate and defend.
. . . is someone who is willing to fight for it.
I don’t mean disrespect to peaceful protest. There is a great value in it, and in civil disobedience, though civil disobedience has been somewhat tamed since the days of Martin Luther King. When I was stationed at Offutt AFB, Nebraska, a protest leader told me that she informed the security police before a nuclear protest about how many would be there, and how many would cross over the line onto the base. That way the SPs could have the right number of vehicles along with lunches to feed the protesters before they received whatever letter they were going to get or they were charged. Gandhi and Martin Luther King never had it so good!
Nonetheless, such protesters do have a definite role in holding our feet to the fire on a variety of moral issues. The desire to protest is not limited to the left or the right, though the causes are different. Neither is the impulse to move toward violence if things don’t change, or don’t change fast enough.
What is often missed, I believe, is the fact that peaceful protest requires an ally: The conscience of the people one is protesting against. If those people are without consience, then the peaceful protester quickly becomes a dead protester. Gandhi was successful because whatever their faults, the British had limits beyond which they would not officially go. Certainly there were atrocities, but those were embarassments to the administration. I know some will say that it’s simply the shame that makes this work–the rulers don’t really have a conscience, they just don’t want to get caught. But even the fact that they don’t want to get caught indicates some conscience.
I think Fareed Zakaria is right on point with his Newsweek commentary We Might ‘Win’ But Still Lose. He notes:
If the 20,000 additional American troops being sent to the Iraqi capital focus primarily on Sunni insurgents, there’s a chance the Shiite militias might get bolder. Colonel Duke puts it bluntly: “[The Mahdi Army] is sitting on the 50-yard line eating popcorn, watching us do their work for them.”
This has been the problem from the first. The question is not how many battles we can win. Doubtless we can win battles. The question is what the final result is going to be, and just how final it will be.
