Today is Eid ul-Fitr. Today marks the end of the month of Ramadan and is a day of celebration for all Muslims. Today is a day of forgiveness, peace and unity.
On the occasion of Eid ul-Fitr, my family and I wish all of you peace, happiness and good health. Eid Mubarak.
What do you do when your incompetence leads to failure? You blame others.
What do you do when a recession occurs on your watch? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when your economic policies cause massive job losses? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when a massive surplus leads to a massive deficit? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when you ignore warnings about terrorist attacks on the homeland? You blame the CIA. What do you do when Bin Laden attacks the United States? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when you are caught fiddling while New Orleans drowns? You blame the local government. What do you do when North Korea tests nukes? You blame the Clinton Administration.
What do you do when you fail to provide basic security after destroying a country? You blame the Iraqis.
Faced with chaos in Iraq, Mr. Bush has said that he will not change his strategy in Iraq, although he might change his tactics:
Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said that while Bush might change tactics, he would not change his overall strategy.
"He’s not somebody who gets jumpy at polls," Snow said of Bush.
Bush, at a political fundraiser in Washington for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, railed against Democrats who criticize the war. Calling the Democrats the party of "cut and run," Bush said voters need to ask: "Which political party has a strategy for victory in this war on terror?’ "
I am a voter and I am asking myself what exactly Mr. Bush’s strategy is in Iraq. As far as I can tell, his strategy from the start of this fiasco has been, "Blame others."
Blaming the Iraqis is something of a parlor game in Washington. It has been a constant theme in Mr. Bush’s attempts to hide his own incompetence from the rest of us. This week, the "blame the Iraqis" strategy became the backbone of an emerging exit strategy in Iraq. The New York Times is reporting this morning that the administration is drafting a timetable for Iraq and will lay down a set of benchmarks that the Iraqi government will have to meet to quell the violence:
The Bush administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to address sectarian divisions and assume a larger role in securing the country, senior American officials said.
Details of the blueprint, which is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki before the end of the year and would be carried out over the next year and beyond, are still being devised. But the officials said that for the first time Iraq was likely to be asked to agree to a schedule of specific milestones, like disarming sectarian militias, and to a broad set of other political, economic and military benchmarks intended to stabilize the country.
Although the plan would not threaten Mr. Maliki with a withdrawal of American troops, several officials said the Bush administration would consider changes in military strategy and other penalties if Iraq balked at adopting it or failed to meet critical benchmarks within it.
A senior Pentagon official involved in drafting the blueprint said Iraqi officials were being consulted as the plan evolved and would be invited to sign off on the milestones before the end of the year. But he added, “If the Iraqis fail to come back to us on this, we would have to conduct a reassessment” of the American strategy in Iraq.
Let me be the first to make this rather obvious prediction: The Iraqi government will not be able to meet the benchmarks to stabilize the country.
Already administration gophers like Mr. Rumsfeld have been telling us that the Iraqis are the ones responsible for providing their own security:
Mr. Rumsfeld alluded to discussions about benchmarks on Friday at a Pentagon news conference, noting that Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey “are currently working with the Iraqi government to develop a set of projections as to when they think they can pass off various pieces of responsibility.”
He emphasized the urgency of transferring more security and governing responsibilities to the Iraqis. “It’s their country,” he said. “They’re going to have to govern it, they’re going to have to provide security for it, and they’re going to have to do it sooner rather than later.”
Yes, it is their country. However, we are the ones that invaded and occupied their country. It is quite clear under international law who is responsible for the security of Iraq. According to the Law of Occupation it is the duty of the United States, as the occupying power, to provide security in Iraq. The Law of Occupation is codified by the Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Conventions, and the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare. Article 43 of the Hague Regulations state:
The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.
While it may be politically convenient for the Bush Administration to blame the Iraqis for the worsening situation in Iraq, it is the failure of the Bush Administration to provide any semblance of basic security to the occupied country of Iraq that is the primary culprit. Instead of providing security, we were given lighthearted quips when the whole world saw the chaos in Iraq immediate after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.
Declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the looting in Iraq was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression and that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein.
He also asserted the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports have indicated and said there was no major crisis in Baghdad, the capital city, which lacks a central governing authority. The looting, he suggested, was "part of the price" for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.
"Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here."
Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said.
Stuff happened because Mr. Bush’s ideology only could envision people throwing flowers at our feet.
The Bush administration was ill-prepared for post-war Iraq. They compounded the problem by handing over Iraq to the Iranian-backed SCIRI and the Iranian nurtured al Dawa party. How dense do you have to be to not understand that the platform of a political party named "The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq" might not exactly be in line with the western liberal democracy the neo-con fantasy envisioned? Is it really a surprise that Shia death squads are roaming the country, wearing police uniforms, and massacring Sunnis, and is it really a surprise that Sunni suicide bombers are targeting the Shia?
Is it really a surprise that Mr. Maliki, a hard-line al Dawa leader with a dubious past, would not want to crack down on the militias that are his pillar of support? After all, it was Mr. Maliki’s own party that invented the modern car bombing, that has killed Americans in Kuwait and in Lebanon, and that has now been given control of a country by the historically challenged George W Bush.
So, as we watch George W Bush cut and run from Iraq, we must not forget that we are at this unfortunate situation because of Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived and ill-executed invasion and occupation of Iraq. Mr. Bush can point fingers anywhere and everywhere he chooses, but he only need look in the mirror to find the man responsible for this fiasco.
Former President Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker on Wednesday at the "Securing the Common Good" event at Georgetown University. It is my opinion that his keynote address was one of the more remarkable and significant political speeches of recent times. In his speech, President Clinton laid out the difference between political philosophy and political ideology:
There is a big difference between a philosophy and an ideology, on the right or the left. If you have a philosophy, it generally pushes you in a certain direction or another, but like all philosophers, you want to engage in discussion and argument. You are open to evidence, to new learning, and you are certainly open to debate the practical applications of your philosophy. Therefore, you might wind up making a principled agreement with someone with a different philosophy.
…
The problem with ideology is, if you’ve got an ideology, you’ve already got your mind made up. You know all the answers, and that makes evidence irrelevant and argument a waste of time, so you tend to govern by assertion and attack. The problem with that is: that discourages thinking and gives you bad results.
This new Bob Woodward book, State of Denial, is well named, but I think it’s important to point out that if you’re an ideologue, denial is an essential part of your political being – whichever side. If you’re an ideologue, you’ve got your mind made up, so when an inconvenient fact pops up, you have to be in denial. It has to be a less significant fact.
Ron Suskind wrote a related book called The One Percent Doctrine. I don’t know if any of you read that. He also co-wrote former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s memoirs. But the most interesting thing to me in this One Percent Doctrine is not the part that people have talked about, about 9/11. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but Mr. Suskind says in The One Percent Doctrine that the ideologues within the current government refer to people not just like me, although I’m included, but even moderate Republicans like Colin Powell and Admiral Scowcroft as somehow lesser political mortals, because we are trapped in, quote, “the reality-based world.” And what they mean by that – in fairness to them, what they mean by that is that we are an empire, we’re the world’s only military superpower, and you can use power to change reality. And if you don’t see that, then you will always be condemning your country to a lesser status.
When I was a kid, I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world, and I like it here.
In one remarkable passage, Bill Clinton summed up the fundamental failure of the Bush Administration. In one remarkable passage, Bill Clinton turned Mr. Bush’s perceived strength – his "steadfastness" – on its head and exposed it for the weakness that it is. Denial is central to Mr. Bush’s ideology.
Ideology and denial have informed Mr. Bush’s foreign policy – most notably his policy in Iraq. All bad news from Iraq has been ignored because it did not fit Mr. Bush’s reality. So, when researchers from the Johns Hopkins University released a study of Iraqi deaths in the current issue of the peer-reviewed medical journal, The Lancet, Mr. Bush dismissed its results as "just not credible." The study found that 654,965 Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion. In addition to Mr. Bush, a number of observers have called into question the death toll in the study’s findings as being too high. The study has become a political tool in the context of the upcoming elections – with the pro-war diehards dismissing the death toll as "not credible" and the anti-war crowd hailing it as validation of the ills of this war. However, the study is not a political document, it is a scientific document – and the science is sound.
The Johns Hopkins study used a methodology that has been used to measure death tolls in other modern conflicts. According to a news release by the study’s authors:
The mortality survey used well-established and scientifically proven methods for measuring mortality and disease in populations. These same survey methods were used to measure mortality during conflicts in the Congo, Kosovo, Sudan and other regions.
Previous studies that used the same methodology, such as the Congo death toll study of 2000, were hailed as authoritative. The Congo study found that the death toll in 2 years had been at least 1.7 million. The epedimiologist who supervised the Congo study, Dr. Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins University, is also one of the authors of the current Iraq study. After the Congo study, Dr. Roberts asked the UN and the US agencies to look over the study:
When he finished his survey, Mr. Roberts asked the United Nations relief assistance coordinator for the area and a representative of the United States Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance in the region to look over his findings. They thought that he might have been conservative, Mr. Roberts recounted.
The current Iraq study based on the same methodology is facing a decidedly more polarized audience.
Although the study’s findings are significantly higher than other estimates based on counting known fatalities arriving at hospitals and morgues, the current study’s findings are in line with a 2004 study of deaths in Iraq conducted by the same team. More significantly, the trend in the study showing that the death rate has been increasing over time is consistent with both the Iraq Body Count numbers and the US military’s own study.
In a study released by the Pentagon in August 2006 entitled "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq", the Iraqi "casualty" count between January 2004 and August 2006 is given at just over 50,000. These numbers are based on "casualty" numbers that are "derived from unverified initial reports submitted by Coalition elements responding to an incident". The study warns that these numbers should be used for "comparative purposes" only. The study also does not break down the number between injured and killed and only refers to "casualties". Given that the US military (and the coalition) does not control much territory in Iraq, it is a safe assumption that the numbers of incidents the Coalition responds to is a small fraction of the total number of violent incidents in Iraq. Even so, the upward trend in the violence, especially in the past year, is startling and tells an ominous story.
The Pentagon study paints a gloomy picture of the security situation in Iraq. It also notes that conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq:
During this reporting period, attacks and civilian casualties have risen, characterized by ethno-sectarian attacks and reprisals. Violence escalated notably in Baghdad, which, as the political, population, and media center of the country, is a high-value target for terrorists.
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Sustained ethno-sectarian violence is the greatest threat to security and stability in Iraq. Breaking this cycle of violence is the most pressing immediate goal of Coalition and Iraqi operations. Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months.
The Pentagon study also claims that most of the violence in Iraq occurs in Baghdad and a few surrounding provinces, most notably, al Anbar province:
However, the reporting in the Pentagon study is likely skewed in favor of provinces where the US military has more of a presence, namely Baghdad and al Anbar provinces. The Johns Hopkins study provides a startlingly different picture of the distribution of violence in Iraq.
According to the Johns Hopkins study, four provinces (Anbar, Ninewa, Salah al-Din, and Diyala) have a higher death rate than does Baghdad. Also, five other provinces (Basrah, Missan, Qadissiya, Kerbala, and Tameem) have death rates in the same category as Baghdad. Therefore, there are ten provinces in Iraq where the death rate is similar or greater than that of Baghdad. That is a stunning statistic and demonstrates that violence has now spread to 10 of Iraq’s 18 provinces and is no longer isolated to the "Sunni Triangle". By contrast, the Pentagon study claims that nearly 90% of the violence is contained within four provinces (Baghdad, Anbar, Salah al-Din and Diyala). Again, it appears that the Pentagon’s view of the violence in Iraq is limited by where it has boots on the ground. Thus, it appears very likely that the Pentagon is vastly undercounting the actual violence in Iraq.
There are also other startling internal numbers in the Johns Hopkins study. Most notably, since the 2003 invasion, child mortality rates in Iraq have more than quadrupled and nearly 40% of all children under the age of 15 have died due to violence, about half of whom have died due to Coalition airstrikes.
Whether one accepts the aggregate finding of the Johns Hopkins study, it seems quite clear that the study validates trends in the death rates that other observers have noted. It is also quite clear that the scientific approach of the study gives a more accurate picture of the violence in Iraq than what the US military is able to see from its limited on the ground presence. As a scientific work, the Johns Hopkins study is not so easily dismissed.
The Iraq War has always been on the intersection of a bad ideology and bad intelligence. It continues to be so. Mr. Bush’s ideology causes him to dismiss the findings of studies such as the one from Johns Hopkins which contradict his preconceived notion of reality. On the other hand, reports that rely on limited information, such as the Pentagon report, are closer to Mr. Bush’s vision of "reality" and serves to validate his world view. Even so, the latest Pentagon report is very pessimistic and Mr. Bush will find it very difficult to continue ignoring the reality of Iraq. Mr. Bush will soon have to enter the reality-based world and he may find that he doesn’t like it here.
Recently I added the captcha spam filter for comments to cut down on the spam I was having to contend with. However, the captcha can be annoying at times.
As a convenience feature, I enabled registration for those readers who do not want to have to go through the captcha spam test when commenting. You can register and login using the links on the sidebar to the right (look under the "Administration" heading on the main page). You will need to provide a valid email to register. The password will be sent to the email provided. Once you login, you can change the password.
For those who do not wish to register, you can continue to comment as before. Thanks to all who comment here. Thanks to ‘dude’ for spurring me into action!
Jim Webb has pulled even with George "Macaca" Allen. It’s crunch time in Virginia. The key to this election is turnout in Northern Virginia.
Help Jim Webb get his message out. Contribute if you can, volunteer if you can.
