DC was gripped by the testimony of Gen. Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations Committees yesterday. The media eagerly awaited the questioning of all three remaining presidential candidates, but there were some interesting back and forths that have been neglected.
Did anyone else watch the testimony yesterday?
Maureen Dowd, in all of her snark, perhaps gives the best summary:
quote:
April 9, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Toil and Trouble
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Maybe it was because I was sitting in the back of the Senate chamber with three war protesters — grim-faced, chanting women dressed in black hooded cloaks, white makeup and blood-red hands — that I felt as though I were watching a production of “Macbeth” rather than a hearing on Iraq.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” the witches in the play said. “Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Many words hovered Tuesday in the Senate — including some pointed ones by the woman and two men vying to be commander in chief. But the words seemed trapped in a labyrinth leading nowhere.
The Surge Twins were back, but the daylong testimony of David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker before two committees seemed more depressing this time. As the Bard writes in “Macbeth”: “From that spring whence comfort seemed to come, discomfort swells.”
They arrived on the heels of the Maliki debacle in Basra, which made it stunningly clear — after a cease-fire was brokered in Iran — that we’re spending $3 trillion as our own economy goes off a cliff so that Iran can have a dysfunctional little friend.
Not good news, given Ahmadinejad’s announcement that his scientists are putting 6,000 new uranium-enriching centrifuges in place.
I like General Petraeus’s air of restrained competence and Ambassador Crocker’s air of wry world-weariness. But now they seem swallowed up by the fresh violence and ancient tribal antagonisms that they were supposed to be overcoming.
The guardians of Iraq offer more of the same — a post-Surge Pause or “consolidation and evaluation,” as the general generically puts it — and no answers about how we can stop our ward from aligning with our enemy.
The way forward, General Petraeus said, should be “conditions-based.”
Even in a place as prosaic as the Senate, this news spurred existential angst.
Senator Evan Bayh summed up the Dada nature of our plan in Iraq: “We’ll know when we get there, and we don’t know when we’re going to get there.”
A confused Chuck Hagel asked the pair: “So, where’s the surge? What are we doing? I don’t see Secretary Rice doing any Kissinger-esque flying around. Where is the diplomatic surge? ... So, where is the surge? What are you talking about?”
Condi is too busy floating trial balloons about being John McCain’s running mate to bother about the fact that she was instrumental in two historic blunders: 9/11 and Iraq.
It’s hard to follow the narrative of our misadventure in Iraq. We went in to help the Shiites that we betrayed in the first Gulf War shake off their Sunni tormentors. But then, predictably for everyone except the chuckleheaded W. and Cheney, the Shiites began tormenting the Sunnis. So we put 90,000 Sunni Sons of Iraq — some of the same ones who were exploding American soldiers — on our payroll so they’d stop shooting at Americans and helping Al Qaeda. Our troops have gone from policing a Sunni-Shiite civil war to policing a Shiite-Shiite power struggle, while Osama bin Laden plots in peace as Al Qaeda in Iraq distracts us and drains our military resources.
Even some senators got confused.
John McCain seemed to repeat his recent confusion over tribes, mistakenly referring to Al Qaeda again as a “sect of Shiites” before correcting himself and saying: “or Sunnis or anybody else.”
And Joe Biden theorized that “The Awakening,” made up of Sunnis, might decide to get into a civil war with Sunnis, presumably meaning Shiites.
But Senator Biden asked a trenchant, if attenuated, question of Mr. Crocker about Al Qaeda: “If you could take it out, you had a choice, the Lord Almighty came down and sat in the middle of the table there and said, ‘Mr. Ambassador, you can eliminate every Al Qaeda source in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or every Al Qaeda personnel in Iraq,’ which would you pick?”
Given the progress beating back Al Qaeda in Iraq, the ambassador replied, he would pick the hiding place of bin Laden.
“That would be a smart choice,” Mr. Biden noted.
Senator John Warner asked the essential question — the one that makes it clear that W. and Cheney hurt the national interest: Is the war making us safer here at home?
General Petraeus avoided answering. But he acknowledged that the “fragile” gains there are “reversible.” “The Champagne bottle,” he told Senator Bayh, “has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator.”
You know you’re in trouble when Barbara Boxer is the voice of reason.
“Why is it,” she asked, “after all we have given — 4,024 American lives, gone; more than half-a-billion dollars spent; all this for the Iraqi people, but it’s the Iranian president who is greeted with kisses and flowers?”
She warmed to: “He got a red-carpet treatment, and we are losing our sons and daughters every single day for the Iraqis to be free. It is irritating is my point.”
Ambassador Crocker dryly assured the senator from California that he believed that Dick Cheney had also gotten kissed on his visit to Iraq.
Thoughts? It's interesting to note that of all the Senators present, only Graham, McCain, and Lieberman threw softball questions at the General.
Groundhog Boy
LOL @ "Independent" Lieberman.
Go Zion!!
Krypton
Nice work lebez...
We need to withdraw before the end of the year. That is my thought.
Lebezniatnikov
quote:
Originally posted by Krypton
Nice work lebez...
We need to withdraw before the end of the year. That is my thought.
A year ago I would have agreed with you immediately, but now I am a bit torn on withdrawal. Granted, an exit plan should have been put into place years ago, but now it seems to me that Iraq is in a precarious position. The US was wrong to invade in the first place (or at least, wrong for both reasons given and means used to intervene... a true humanitarian intervention could have been another story, and one that the Security Council would have been far more receptive to), and we've certainly messed up the state-building enterprises we've undertaken. Political reform in Iraq remains non-existent, the training of police forces is way behind schedule and mostly ineffective, and establishment of human security five years later is further away than ever. We really screwed the place up.
And I think we'd be morally remiss if we withdrew now. We missed our window - after the invasion Iraq was a basket case. But it was stable. Now it is not. We should have withdrawn in 2004 and invited the UN in under a Chapter XII peace-keeping mandate. The UN would have saved face by cleaning up our mess, and the US would have been out of a sticky situation albeit without a democracy-building effort under our belt. But democracy is now an elusive goal at best, so it would have been better to cut our losses while we still could.
Today Iraq is a complete disaster - it is factionalized to a degree heretofore unseen. Co-existence, much less cooperation, seems impossible in the political arena. Radical militias control the streets, and fundamentalist clerics are gaining influence. Iran is cozying up to the government we installed. There are absolutely no security structures put in place right now to maintain order if the US withdraws. It's sad, but we've created a situation that could only be worse if we weren't there.
The United States Institute of Peace released a report prior to Petraeus' trip to Washington that lays some of this out, and offers a harrowing prediction: if the United States withdraws, the fighting in Iraq will escalate to the point of ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide. I'm skeptical on the genocide bit, but it does strike me as similar to the situation in Darfur circa 2002. In Darfur, the Sudanese Liberation Army (Darfur rebels) may have had a larger constituency a la the Sunnis, but they were vastly overwhelmed in firepower by the various janjaweed militias that were supplied by the government (substitute Shia militias for the janjaweed and Iran for the Sudanese government in this metaphor). The factionalization of both the rebels in Darfur and the janjaweed militias that have proven willing to sell their services to the highest bidder have made it impossible to start a peace process, much less finish one. In any case, this comparison is neither here nor there.
I suggest you read the USIP report. It is pretty fascinating (and frightening) stuff. I'm the last person in the world to agree with John McCain on anything (100 years ffs!), but I do think an ounce of pragmatism is needed here. Biden and Lugar seem to have latched on to a key idea here - Iraq policy has been horribly misguided and has created more problems than it has solved. But is it right to throw up our hands and say, "welp, we obviously created a lot of problems here, I guess we'll leave you folks to sort them out yourselves"? At what point are we morally culpable for the situation we've created?
An excerpt from the USIP Report:
quote:
U.S. Interests, Risks and Requirements
Each of these policies places different priority on the U.S.’s five critical interests in Iraq, and poses different risks and requirements:
Full, Unconditional Commitment:
Platform for Terrorism: Major positive. Provides strategic denial to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) as long as Awakenings and U.S. forces remain in place.
Restore capacity and credibility: Major negative. U.S. troops are not freed up for use elsewhere. On the positive side, the U.S. may generate credibility by sustaining its commitment to its announced goals.
Regional Stability: Mixed. A large U.S. force presence prevents a major regional conflagration but could also serve as a justification for regional interference in Iraq.
Iranian Influence: Slight positive. This policy focuses on curbing Iranian-sponsored militancy, but leaves the door open to Iranian political influence. Over time, if a national dialogue is successful, the emergence of an “Iraqi center" could work to balance out Iranian influence.
Single State: Major positive.
Reduced, Conditional Commitment:
This assessment of interests assumes that bargaining succeeds. If bargaining does not succeed, see below.
Platform for Terrorism: Positive. Encourages Sunni buy-in to the political process and therefore also helps deny a safe haven. A residual force will also be in place to combat AQI when necessary and facilitate intelligence gathering.
Restore capacity and credibility: Positive with regard to maintaining U.S. capacity Mixed effect on prestige and credibility, largely depending on execution.
Regional Stability: Slight negative. Radical decentralization and reduced force presence risk greater instability, but a residual presence mitigates this.
Iranian Influence: Slight negative. Radical decentralization and reduced force presence invite greater interference.
Single State: Negative. Though technically a single state would be maintained, it might be radically decentralized.
This approach requires less than the current policy in terms of financial, political and military commitment. However, it leaves the U.S. with less control over the situation, and depends for its success on the will of the various Iraqi factions to stick to their commitments. It could lead to greater instability, but leaves the U.S. with a capacity to intervene if its vital interests are threatened.
Unconditional, Near-Total Reduction of Military Commitment:
Platform for Terrorism: Negative. The U.S. is less able to act against terrorists in Iraq with no force presence there. This is partially mitigated by the lack of the U.S. presence as a spur to extremism plus a strengthened external military presence designed for containment.
Restore capacity and credibility: Mixed. Reduces financial and human cost, facilitates restoration of U.S. military capacity, frees up U.S. diplomatic and other resources for other issues and eliminates international grievance against the U.S. On the negative side, the perception of U.S. defeat is highly likely.
Regional Stability: It could go either way. If the Iraqi state fails and massive conflict ensues, this policy has a major negative effect on regional stability. If no major regional conflagration occurs and the Iraqi state holds, withdrawal would help regional stability by removing a source of friction and a target for terrorists.
Iranian Influence: Negative. Iran has a freer hand to act in Iraq without U.S. opposition. However, this policy frees the U.S. to strike Iran without the risk of retaliation against U.S. forces in Iraq.
Single State: Difficult to predict. This policy leaves political development entirely in the hands of the Iraqis. The absence of U.S. forces may facilitate Iraqi reconciliation and make a united Iraq more likely, or it may lead to a break up.
This policy risks a complete failure of the Iraqi state, massive chaos and even genocide. Should genocide occur, advocates of this policy believe the U.S. would have to intervene to stop it. The credibility the U.S. will generate with the international community by withdrawing from Iraq may increase the likelihood that others would assist in this effort. This policy also requires that the neighboring states accept an increased U.S. military presence and not interfere in the U.S. withdrawal.
Obviously the current strategy needs to be changed. But I worry that withdrawing completely and quickly could swing the pendulum the other way - whereas now we are hated for being there and stirring up trouble, tomorrow we could be hated for leaving Iraq to destroy itself. Because you know once we leave we won't be going back - humanitarian intervention will not not on the agenda in Washington or at the UN, and you better believe that the terrorists and insurgents over there know it. So I think we need to make sure something can be put into place to replace the US security presence (as incomplete and inadequate as it has been). The UN is having a difficult enough time filling it's mandate for a force in Darfur, and I imagine donor states won't be thrilled about filling the troop requirements for the large-scale peace-keeping mission that would be needed. Perhaps a regional organization could be authorized by the Security Council to conduct a Chapter XIII mission... but I don't know who that would be. Perhaps the EU, but I don't know that they have the political will to expend that much in the way of resources.
Things don't look good for Iraq - but they don't look any better if we leave.
/rant
hardcore trancer
I guess it is safe to call this a "never eding war"?but ofcourse accoding to Bush he will be rememberd as a hero in the history book and a true leader who saved the world from evil.:o
I honestly think that the neocons are loving the idea of having to be in Iraq for 100 years to come and invading Iraq was their golden ticket to the middle east for a very long time.Perhaps that what Bush was trying to say when he said "Mission Accomplished" aka "Neocon Mission Accomplished".
DJ Shibby
We need reform preventing people from gaining positions of power in government.
Lebezniatnikov
quote:
Originally posted by hardcore trancer
I guess it is safe to call this a "never eding war"?but ofcourse accoding to Bush he will be rememberd as a hero in the history book and a true leader who saved the world from evil.:o
I honestly think that the neocons are loving the idea of having to be in Iraq for 100 years to come and invading Iraq was their golden ticket to the middle east for a very long time.Perhaps that what Bush was trying to say when he said "Mission Accomplished" aka "Neocon Mission Accomplished".
Yeah - the hearings this week really made me wonder if the hard-line Republicans even care at all that Iraq is so messed up. Their only real bar for success was whether or not fewer Americans are dying (and fewer were, until recently). No concept of what it is like on the ground for anyone else at all. Angelina Jolie actually delivered a report to the CFR a few weeks ago about what it's like being an IDP in Iraq, and a lot of people took notice about how horrible the conditions are and what the US can do to improve human security before withdrawing. Hopefully that filters through to more members of Congress as well (I believe she is due to testify to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while she is in Washington this week).
