Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Iraq

  • Is Killing Every One of Them Really Our Only Option?

    I saw a Facebook post that claims that in the light of the beheading of U. S. journalist James Foley our only option is to hunt down and kill every one of them as soon as possible.

    I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a pacifist. I believe acts of violence and even war can be justified. On the other hand, I think they rarely are. The question is whether we’ll really get the results we intend.

    I’m human. I’d like the people who did this to pay for it. I would have no problem condemning the perpetrators to death in a court of law.

    The question is whether another war is actually going to make anything better. Will it make less people die? Will it reduce the number of fanatics in the world? Will it mean that we won’t see another American beheaded in some other place at some other time?

    I hope we think about that.

    But more importantly, why did the killing of one American make this sort of violence our only option, but the killing of hundreds of Iraqis did not. Is there a difference in the value of these various lives?

    I pray that we, as Christians, will try to apply grace to this situation, to look on everyone, even those committing atrocities, as souls for whom Christ died. I hope as a nation that we will consider looking further forward in time and more broadly in space before we act to solve one problem by creating dozens of others.

    There may be a military option. The state bears a modern sword. Were I still in the military, I would be prepared to participate, to help wield it. But let’s look at the results of our previous military efforts before we move too quickly and ineffectively.

  • Bad Reasons for Getting Out of a War

    I’m an opponent of the Iraq war, but I oppose it on strategic grounds. Even now, I believe that we have gained very little, and are in fact worse off than when we started. After a period of time we will find that Iraq has become another haven for terrorists, perhaps not as bad as Afghanistan was, but definitely not safe and friendly. We can blame that on the idea that we can create a government in such a state that is both democratic and reliably friendly, and do so by force from the outside.

    For some odd reason, foreigners killing local folks, however they may express their justification, just don’t become popular with the same local folks. Sometimes you have to do it, but don’t expect it to make you popular. So if you are carrying out a war in order to become popular, for some reason you’re likely to fail.

    Stupid, conflicting aims – lousy results. We similarly harmed our own interests when we pushed for early elections for the Palestinians, and then were shocked by the results. (Ex-President Bush take note: People do freely choose terrorists as their rulers.)

    But then there are bad reasons for getting out of a war, for example:

    • The people will start to love us if we go home after the invasion.
    • Force is really unnecessary if we just talk enough.
    • We’re really tired of fighting the war.
    • This is harder than we thought when we started.

    Thus I view with some alarm this report that only 1/3 of Americans support sending more troops to Afghanistan. In this case the point is not popularity, though we may be able to aid the current government. The point is hunting terrorists, in a place where actual terrorists live. As long as that is a viable option, we need to be willing to use the necessary resources. When it is strategically right, we need to be able to move on.

    Now I must give a hat tip to Dr. Michael Westmoreland-White, who alerted me to this report. In his case I must note that he is consistently opposed the war, in fact, all wars. That is a consistent and moral position, even though I disagree.

    The folks that get on my nerves are the ones who are happy to invade, kill a few thousand people, and then get out because it’s inconvenient. They don’t oppose war; they oppose inconvenience. Theirs is not a moral choice; it’s a position into which they drift for their own comfort.

    Americans have a bad habit of supporting the glory of a quick invasion when we can see the enemy running and dying. It’s the hard job of cleaning up afterward for which we lack the stomach. That’s the worst of all possible combinations; it’s childish and immature. A nation with our kind of firepower can’t afford to be so childish and immature.

  • Taking Care of Veterans

    I linked yesterday to a story about PTSD related discharges, and today I found this Newsweek article on problems with the [tag]Veterans Administration[/tag].

    I believe people from all across the political spectrum should be able to agree that we must take good care of our troops and our veterans.

    But I want to point out something else. The figure given in the Newsweek article is that [tag]veterans[/tag] care resulting from the wars in [tag]Afghanistan[/tag] and [tag]Iraq[/tag] will be at least six times the official estimates. I can’t confirm the accuracy of those figures, but it does fit in with a constant refrain from these wars–they cost more than is projected, and the actual cost is extremely high.

    Jesus used preparation for war as an example of the need to count the cost (Luke 14:31-32). I’m not using this as a call to cowardice, but rather as a call to use such resources as we have effectively and wisely. Just looking at the costs of the two wars we are in right now should let us know that a strategy of attacking and occupying every country that promotes terrorism in any way is not going to be cost effective. Continuing even further to reform their governments into an image that we prefer is well outside any range.

    I’ve heard Iraq advocated as a base to fight terrorism elsewhere. But what sane strategist would suggest a base that costs more resources to maintain than those that can be projected from it?

    One of these costs that must be counted is the care of veterans. It’s a moral duty. But even more it’s a practical duty. If people come to understand that if they sacrifice themselves for their country they and/or their loved ones will not be cared for properly, it will become harder and harder to find the necessary quality of troops. Loyalty will only carry people so far when it is not reciprocated.

  • Anthropology and Military Planning

    It seems that some people in the military have noticed the fact that we don’t really understand the territories and the countries about which we so glibly pontificate. And much of the pontification is official, which makes the ignorance more egregious.

    In an BBC article received via e-mail, I read the following:

    But that is not all. The US military has developed a new programme known as the Human Terrain System (HTS) to study social groups in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The HTS depends heavily on the co-operation of anthropologists, with their expertise in the study of human beings and their societies.

    Steve Fondacaro, a retired special operations colonel overseeing the HTS, is keen to recruit cultural anthropologists.

    “Cultural anthropologists are focused on understanding how societies make decisions and how attitudes are formed. They give us the best vision to see the problems through the eyes of the target population,” he said.

    There’s a story that brings up mixed emotions. We certainly do need to understand people better, but a phrase like “target populations” presents an understanding that is at least equivocal. What exactly are we targeting these populations for? What are we going to do with them, and what gives us the right to do it?

    But despite my questions I welcome the notion of creating a better educated military. Hopefully somewhere in this process some military leaders will be asking just how we can cooperate with, rather than dominate local populations. Perhaps troops can learn how to work in a way that minimizes offense. But as long as those military forces are operating under orders to transform those societies into an image that is desirable in American eyes, I don’t think it will work perfectly. It’s good military strategy, but good military strategy needs to be employed in the service of good political and diplomatic strategy.

    And that is the level at which I believe our country as a whole, and particularly the appropriate portions of our government need to be better educated. A little bit of anthropology would go a long way with our diplomats. To those who suggest that we have such experts, I would answer that we are 1) not listening to them, 2) they are not as expert as they appear, or 3) we don’t have enough of them.

    I suspect all three. Why? Because somewhere up there in the American government somebody thought that we would easily accomplish the invasion of Iraq (we did), would be welcomed by the Iraqi people as liberators, and then would easily create a new government. Low cost in money, in lives, and even in time. Then we could get on with other targets in the war on terror.

    Whoever painted that scenario was somewhere between criminally negligent and grossly stupid. There was never any reason for anyone to believe that in the first place.

    Of course we need anthropologists and other social scientists in the military. The more wisely force is applied, the less force is needed. In social situations, the best result is when no force is actually applied at all. I’m not so optimistic as to think we can attain that easily, but the more intelligently we act, the less people we’re going to have to kill–our own and others.

    The tragedy is that we’ll be sending in anthropologists to help us deal with various tribal groups after much of the damage is already done. If we are to fight and win a war on terror, we will need more than a military strategy. The prime error of diplomats is the belief that diplomacy accomplishes all; the prime error of those who wield military power (but not usually of the soldiers on the front line) is to believe that force can ultimately solve all problems.

    A strategic approach to the [tag]war on terror[/tag] will have to involve an intelligent strategy, first political, and then military where problems are actually intractable.

    One further note–I can see the ethical objections to anthropologists in being part of these teams. Do you want to use your understanding of a tribal group to facilitate their manipulation by the military with no control over just what will be done and how? You would never know when your knowledge might become the key to destroying a culture. At the same time, applied at the proper level, such knowledge could result in great savings of life. Perhaps there is a balance to be sought here.

  • What I Want for Election Day – A Counter-Terror Strategy

    It’s getting within a quarter or so of the first votes, so I thought I’d put in a few posts on what I, as a self-proclaimed moderate independent want for election day. I have to note that it doesn’t look thus far like I’m going to get it, but one can always wish, no?

    The great weakness of our candidates, I believe, is that they lack any evidence of strategic thinking on dealing with terror. From one side we are hearing the “we’re in a war” beat, and we are told that we will go hunt terrorists for however long it takes and wherever they are hidden. What we are not told is how this strategy is ever to come to a close, or how the resources for such a strategy are to be provided.

    On the other hand we have those who would pull out of [tag]Iraq[/tag]–an option devoutly to be desired in my view. At the same time, they haven’t laid out any long term plan that would substantially reduce or eliminate terrorism as a threat in the world. Iraq was a bad idea. Whether you are just plain anti-war, or simply prefer your wars to accomplish something, you can get on board with that. Incidentally, I would also like to see the withdrawal accompanied by an assessment of just what a foreign army can actually accomplish in Iraq, no matter how good that army is, and a measurement against that realistic standard. “Unified and democratic” isn’t likely to be on that list of potential objectives.

    On the domestic front, it seems to me that we are in the business of kind of patching this or that element up haphazardly. What does a nation that is alert to [tag]terrorism[/tag], has the law enforcement and intelligence capabilities to detect such attacks, and can deal with the legal aftermath look like?

    On the Republican side, it seems to me to look more and more like a terrorist state, where we just “trust” the executive branch of the government to do the right thing without any sort of accountability. More law enforcement is no good unless it is also smarter law enforcement. What will it be like to live in this country at the end of the process? I suspect that most of these candidates haven’t really thought about that. On the Democratic side, many candidates are interested in protecting our rights, but what precisely are they going to do instead?

    I could suggest many things such as a large increase in the number of linguists and specialists in Middle Eastern culture in our government and intelligence agencies. Our current strategy and intelligence shows a great lack in that area. I’m not talking about a minor change–I’m talking about a massive increase. That is just one thing that I think is not being given the attention that it deserves. There are many others.

    Do I personally have a strategy to propose? Not in detail, but then I’m not running for president. I can certainly tell you the key priorities of such a strategy.

    1. Military action limited to responses to attacks and search and destroy for specific terrorist targets. War is only a potential under the strict standards that require a short period of time and a clear improvement to result.
    2. Eliminate the option to prescribe a government for other countries. Let them figure it out, even if a dictatorship results. When the issue is genocide, respond with the international community, not unilaterally.
    3. Increase in law enforcement personnel and equipment. Much of the money being spent on Iraq would have been much better spent in this country. There are techniques and and technologies available to make travel much safer.
    4. Strong emphasis on intelligent intelligence.
    5. Education, education, education, both for personal safety and a better understanding of the world. We need a shift from a purely North-American/European emphasis in our historical and cultural education, to a greater inclusion of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American material.
    6. Constant accountability. Nobody should be able to spend money, or more importantly kill people without having some responsible layers of accountability. Executive privilege and “state secrets” are being way overused. Some people may think this makes them safer, but instead it makes the agencies involved lazier, and less likely to pursue the highest probability activities.

    I don’t want much, do I?

    I’ll continue over the next few weeks with occasional posts on what I’d like to see in presidential and congressional candidates. Right now, I expect to be wearing a figurative clothespin on my nose when I go to the polls.

  • Important Senate Business: Condemning Ads

    They took the time to condemn the [tag]MoveOn.org[/tag] Ad on General [tag]Petraeus[/tag] (LA Times story).

    Now I don’t like the ad, and I don’t particularly like MoveOn.org, and I think private groups and politicians should go ahead and do all the condemning that the ad deserves. Though I’m an opponent of the war in Iraq, I think the ad deserves a good deal of condemning. But all of that, like the ad itself, is simply part of the free exchange of ideas that we have in this country. MoveOn.org gets to act irresponsibly; that’s their right. I get to loathe them for it; that’s my right. I get to think General Petraeus is wrong even though I loathe the ad attacking him, that’s my right. None of it is a matter for the law.

    And of course one can point out to me that the Senate didn’t pass a law. It’s not binding. OK, fine. But if it’s not a law, it’s non-binding, and it just expresses their opinion, why bother doing anything about it in the Senate? This is not the only such resolution, of course, and they have varying relevance to the business of the Senate. But right now, our government lacks a coherent policy on terrorism, the president and congress are wrangling over just how to behave in Iraq, thus preserving the maximally nasty situation in which we hold on, but with no reason to expect success. At the end of the fiscal year, the Senate will be running out of time to accomplish important business like appropriations bills.

    And here they are condemning an ad. Let them condemn (or condone) ads on their own time out on the campaign trail. That’s where it belongs.

  • Learning from the War

    Joe Carter caught my attention again today with his post This I No Longer Believe: 5 Lessons Learned from the Iraq War. Now he’s responding to this post by Rod Dreher, but I actually found his list more interesting.

    I’m not going to make my own list, because I don’t think I’ve learned five things from the Iraq war. I’m not usually terribly prescient, and I have a long line of bad calls on elections to prove it, but I thought this war was going to be a failure from the start. The one thing I have definitely learned is that the American voters in general, and the leadership in particular do not seem to be able to think in terms of strategy. We seem to manage one step at a time, with two at the outside. “Let’s withdraw from Iraq so American soldiers will quit dying.” That’s one step. “What do we do about the genocide that will result?” That’s two steps. A third might be to ask whether there will come a time we can withdraw without destabilization, and if so when that will be, and how much it will cost. We can continue on from there to ask what other things we might do with the same resources to change the future.

    I think in general both sets of lessons learned don’t look far enough into the context of each war and why people might have supported or opposed them. I know that many people expected the war in Iraq to be short and easy, and there was no reason to expect that. In fact this is one area where I personally give politicians little slack. I think anyone should have known that establishing a stable and democratic government in Iraq such that we could withdraw was going to be massively difficult.

    A couple of days ago I made a somewhat intemperate remark about the Lybian government with reference to the Lybia 6. Despite calling my remark intemperate, and despite the fact that I might well not have said it, I’m not apologizing for it, because it does reflect what I think in an unedited way. Yet the Iraq war has involved similarly stupid activities.

    I would suggest Guantanamo as a good combination of the immoral and the strategically stupid. Leaving aside the immoral, let me look at the strategically stupid part. Is it likely that the additional information gained by the controversial actions helped against terrorism enough to justify the political fallout, both domestic and foreign? I doubt it. There is a tendency amongst some people to think it’s patriotic to say “the hell with everyone else” and go it alone. I won’t debate “patriotic,” but that attitude is definitely dumb. We do need international cooperation to fight terrorism. In addition, the domestic political viability of a policy is also one of the considerations for whether a policy is strategically viable. In other words, the political support has to last until the policy is completed.

    But I wanted to respond to one particular point Carter said he learned:

    3. I no longer believe that Arab nations are capable of sustaining liberal democracies. The empirical evidence for this belief is overwhelming: Arab culture is currently unable to sustain democratic forms of government. Some people will decry this belief as racist or xenophobic. But it is simply being realistic. I used to think that Samuel Huntington was an intelligent crank; now I think he’s prophetic. As he once noted, the Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous. Thinking that freedom could take root in the blood-soaked soil of Arab culture was a naive assumption. Iraq has disabused me of such notions.

    It simply amazes me that anyone thought that they were capable of doing so, or that if they were, such a democracy could be imposed from outside. Iraq is an especially tricky case. We try to think of all the people of Iraq as “Iraqis” in the sense that we think of Americans as Americans. But the border lines that create Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, and Jordan, amongst many others, are the product of the activities of western powers. We start with the notion of having the majority rule, or something close to that. Well, for Sunnis, that means Shi’ite rule in Iraq. They are, understandably, not crazy about it. And that’s only the first of many, many problems.

    We have somehow gotten the idea that an American style democracy is the best thing for everyone, and that, if they are given the opportunity, everybody will embrace it. It’s a highly arrogant position for us to take. Might it not be better to suggest that a country’s government needs to arise out of its own history and culture? And perhaps we should extend that to the idea that a “country” should arise out of its own history and culture.

    A similar oddity occurred with the Palestinian election. We wanted a democratic election amongst the Palestinians. But then they went and elected the wrong people! All from our point of view, of course. So we cut off funding because now the Palestinian government was run by terrorists. I would suggest that we go back to the first step and ask whether it should be up to us to tell the Palestinian government that it must be democratic. Maybe we should only specify our requirements of them in terms of foreign policy goals, not their governmental forms.

    If we, as a country, could learn something from this war, I would hope it would be this. Be determined in defending ourselves, but lose the arrogance about telling other people how to run their countries. We don’t have enough troops available to pay for our arrogance.

  • Impeachment and Political Strategy

    I have long argued against the war in Iraq on strategic grounds. I don’t object to war when war is absolutely necessary, but I believe that when war is waged for the wrong reasons, conducted improperly, or for unattainable goals, however good those goals sound, that war is a tragedy and is immoral. Killing is such a terrible thing that one must weigh very carefully one’s decision to take that route.

    Now we have a situation of political strategy, and I think the various factions are taking just as little consideration for strategy in the political conflict as others have in the planning for war. Recent polls show a substantial amount of support for impeaching President Bush and even more for impeaching Vice-President Cheney. It would be nice if one could believe that most of those who favor impeachment actually knew what impeachment is, and for example which house impeaches and which tries impeachments. That is probably too much to hope. I suspect the answers in favor of impeachment include a large number of folks who simply want Bush and Cheney gone, and the sooner the better. One should also recall that this is the same electorate who once produced an approval rating for Bush in the 80s.

    I don’t really like either man. I didn’t vote for them, and I abhor their war policy. I think very often their domestic strategies in terms of home security have been crude and ineffective while unnecessarily threatening civil rights. I think Bush’s use of signing statements to ignore portions of the law is wrong. I think his efforts to continue the war right now are misguided. He’s missing an opportunity to at least control the mode of exit. One aspect of the strategy of war is the political support one has for the action. Ignore that portion, and you ask for trouble.

    Now I’m no legal expert. I’m not going to argue what congress can and cannot use as the grounds for impeachment. I’m pretty sure, however, that the final answer is going to be that they can use pretty much anything they can get a 2/3 majority of the Senate agree on for conviction. Violating the constitution is a form of violating the law, but it doesn’t have fixed penalties. “Abuse of power” is a rather hazy sort of concept. I actually think it’s quite reasonable to have 2/3 of the Senate agree on what it might be.

    But the question is just how valuable is this particular means of getting rid of a president? We’re already into the election campaign for the next presidential election. In a little more than a year we’ll be voting on who we want to succeed Bush and Cheney. Is it a good idea to go through the contentious process of impeachment right now? One question, of course, is whether 2/3 of the Senate would agree to convict on any particular charge. I suspect the answer is no.

    The impeachment talk is, I think, directed to the hardliners in the Democratic party and those who are to its left. It shores up the base, and provides a means to keep from losing those supporters to third party candidates. At the same time there are quite a number–a growing number–of people who are like me in one respect. We don’t have party loyalty. We believe both the Democratic and Republican parties have forfeited any right to our support as parties. When all the partisan bickering has played out (on this topic; there will be another by then), some one of you is going to need our vote, and we’d like to see you show some good strategic sense, an ability to see all aspects of a problem and to find the best strategy to get where you’re going.

    Cindy Sheehan has told Speaker Nancy Pelosi she’s going to run against her if she doesn’t work to impeach President Bush. I think this is a good opportunity for Pelosi to demonstrate some good strategic sense. Not statesmanship; that would probably be too much to ask–just good strategy. She can say, “No, that’s a bad idea. I’m interested in keeping and building a Democratic majority. I’m more interested in withdrawing from Iraq successfully than I am in scoring revenge points on the current President.”

    She’s played this one right so far; hopefully she’ll continue.

  • Good Judgment and Iraq War Flip-Flops

    I’m watching the list of GOP legislators who are breaking with President Bush on the war in Iraq with mixed emotions. On the one hand it’s nice to see people realizing that we are trying to force our military to accomplish the impossible. On the other hand, I have to ask why they are doing this and what changed their minds.

    According to an MSNBC story:

    More than a dozen Republican senators who are running for re-election next year head the list of lawmakers to watch. But others, too, have expressed concerns that the GOP has grown increasingly vulnerable on the issue. As the clock ticks toward Election Day, voter pressure is building against any lawmaker still standing with President Bush on the war.

    So what’s driving these defections? Is it a sudden realization that they were wrong about the original invasion? Is it an attack of strategic good sense, in which one examines the goals and the means available to accomplish them and then reassesses the appropriate use of one’s resources?

    Well, no. The legislators in question are in election campaigns. They are watching Bush’s popularity drop, and they feel the need to get out.

    The wildcards in the debate are senators, like Roberts, Stevens and Chambliss, who have staunchly defended Bush but are watching his poll numbers drop.

    Now my question is this: How will the voters react to a flip-flop to get out of Iraq just because of the poll numbers? Shouldn’t the voters in those districts have expected these legislators, who after all have research staffs and access to much sensitive information, to have made a better judgment call in the first place? And if the Iraq war was a good idea, as these senators seem to think (or have thought, at least), why is it now a good idea to pull out after thousands of casualties? If the goal is attainable, as they apparently used to think, shouldn’t one put in the resources and accomplish things? If it is not attainable, what has happened in the last few months that would change that assessment?

    I personally believe the goal of a united, democratic, and secure Iraq was never attainable in the first place, and if we did invade, that should not have been one of our aims. I’d say that the last four years lines up with my assessment. But this is not just my assessment. There are plenty of experts on the region who were prepared to say this and back up their claims before the invasion. In comparison to other wars, and in relation to the war aims, this one has not gone all that badly. In fact, I personally expected it to go a bit worse. The government building efforts have gone better than I would have expected, though not enough better to change my mind in favor of the war. I have been hoping from the start that I would be proven wrong, but time is not doing so. It is so tragic to have these numbers of deaths without success. But the bottom line is that the “Iraqi people” would need to bear the major burden of creating a free, democratic, and secure nation, and there isn’t even a truly definable “Iraqi people,” and to the extent we can imagine such an entity, their goals are not our goals.

    I welcome the idea that we will have an effort to withdraw troops. I just think these senators who have supported the war up to now and are switching in the face of opinion polls do not have the courage of their own bad judgment. They hope to place all the blame on President Bush, who is term limited, and somehow to escape their own responsibility. I hope the voters don’t let them by with it.

  • Richardson Misunderstands Diplomacy

    This story and video shows why Richardson really doesn’t understand how diplomacy actually works. He’s going to withdraw all the troops and then he’s going to go seriously into diplomacy.

    Let’s not make a mistake about this. When we withdraw from Iraq, we’re going to lose most of our ability to impact the country diplomatically. What some people refuse to understand is that there are people in the world whose motivations are not good, who are not going to be persuaded by our good arguments, and who prefer killing us to peace. Once the threat of force is gone, countries like Syria and Iran will have no reason to cooperate.

    The threat of sanctions is futile and always has been. The sanctions will leak, and Iran (the sanctions target specified by Richardson) will go right on doing what they intended to do all along.

    I support withdrawing from Iraq, but I do so because we cannot create a democratic Iraq through military means. We are now pursuing a goal we cannot accomplish. It’s not because our troops are not good; it’s because a unified and democratic Iraq is simply contrary to the nature of the country itself. We need to withdraw for two reasons: 1) People are dying for an impossible goal–horrible strategy, tragic reality; and 2) We need those troops to take action elsewhere. We need them, for example, as a credible threat to add to the negotiating mix with Iran, amongst many other things.

    The idea that we’ll pull out our troops and then settle in to serious diplomacy is absolutely ludicrous. After the withdrawal we aren’t going to have any chips to throw into the game in Iraq. It appears some politicians are living in dreamland and don’t have the courage to recognize the negative side effects of their policies.