Tenth Anniversay of the War in Iraq: History will judge George Bush a Failure.

After the American Century

Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, it should be obvious that President George Bush made an enormous blunder. Thousands of American soldiers died, but far more than ten people from Iraq died for every American who perished.  The country is struggling with sectarian and ethnic divisions, and its enormous oil wealth has yet to lift it out of economic instability. The progress is slow, if, indeed, there is any progress.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush and the Republicans insisted there were. They were wrong. Did they lie, or were they incompetent?

Democracy did not blossom in Iraq once their dictator was removed. Bush and the Republicans, particularly the neo-conservatives, insisted that democracy would emerge out of the war. They were wrong.

Millions of Americans protested.  In February, 2003, during the buildup to the War, I marched twice against it, once in Cleveland and again in San Francisco. In each case, I had been invited to give a lecture, and happened to be in town when the marches took place. There were many such protests all across the US, including Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, and also small cities such as South Bend, Indiana. We were ignored at the time, but we were right.

Protest in Manhattan Against the Iraq War, 2006

The claim was that the Americans would win a quick victory and that the occupation would not require too many troops. In fact, more people died after the war was officially declared to be over than during the war itself, and a large number of troops were needed for most of the last decade.

The cost of the war in Iraq was not financed by tax increases. Instead, Bush and the Republicans engaged in a form of fantasy economics, assuming that budget cuts would stimulate the economy so much that deficits would decline. Instead, US debt ballooned. At its worst, the Iraq War and occupation was costing $1 billion every day. Bush and the Republicans were wrong. They squandered money that they did not have.

History will not be kind to George Bush, nor should it be. Either he lied or he was misled about why the US went into the War. In judgement, he failed. In execution, he failed. The war was waged for the wrong reasons, and the peace was lost through further incompetence, including torture of prisoners, hiring corrupt contractors, and on and on.

Bush thought he was projecting American power, but instead he projected insensitivity, arrogance, and incompetence. His war caused enormous suffering; its full consequences are still unfolding. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq probably made better relations with Iran impossible and made it easier for the hardline fundamentalists there to remain in power. The Kurds became semi-autonomous in eastern Iraq, but this created problems for Syria and Turkey, which have Kurdish minorities. Nationalism and religious fundamentalism are on the whole stronger in the region, while all the economies are weaker, except for those on the Arabian peninsula, with their oil wealth. If there is a silver lining emerging from the clouds of war, it is hard to see.

Obama Correct to Leave Iraq

After the American Century

After months of negotiations, the US and Iraq were unable to agree on how many troops might be left behind to help train and support the coalition government. Reportedly, the US suggested a level of 10,000, but the Iraqis wanted only half that, or even less. President Obama then decided, after repeated attempts to get a clear agreement, to pull the plug.

This seems the right decision, and probably the only option. Would a few thousand American troops really make much of a difference to the country's security? Keeping a symbolic force in the country might well have been a continued provocation to the opposition. Much better to give Iraq a clear message: the US is leaving. Iraq, you are now on your own, as a sovereign nation, to succeed or fail.

Nine years is a long time to intervene in any country, and the United States at some point must have higher priorities than continuing to keep 42,000 troops in Iraq. There were once four times that many, plus troops from the "coalition of the willing."

I was never a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, which was justified by the false claim that it harbored weapons of mass destruction. The country was ruled by a terrible regime, but removal of that regime has cost 700+  billion dollars and an enormous loss of life. The war itself was not difficult to win, but the Bush Administration disgracefully showered huge contracts on its political allies to rebuild the country and treated prisoners disgracefully, angering the entire Arab world against the abuses, displayed in photographs for all to see on the Internet.  An on-line poll conducted by MSNBC has found, as of this writing, that 87% of the respondents do not think the Iraq war was worth it. Many commentators share this view, including the Center for American Progress.

This nine years in Iraq offers quite a contrast with Libya, where the cost was far lower, the time required shorter, and American troops never entered the country. This difference strongly suggests the difference between Bush and Obama, Republicans and Democrats.

The arts of peace are more nuanced and difficult than the arts of war. Let us hope that Iraq will do better governing itself than it has under the occupation. But for the US, it is time to spend its scarce resources elsewhere. Think what that $700 billion might have been used for.

Afghanistan

After the American Century

Imagine you are in Obama's inner circle. You have inherited Bush's foreign policy, including the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What do you do? Pulling out immediately would invite the Taliban and Al Qaeda back into the country, and it would also expose the new president to fierce criticism from the Republicans. No president wants to lose a war in the first year of his administation, and no American politician can survive very long if he seems be doing favors for Osama Bin Ladin. But if the Americans are going to continue to lead an army in Afghanistan, what are the realistic possibilities for success? This was such a difficult issue that the Administration took a year to decide.

The answer has now been made public, and in essence it is to escalate the war for almost two years and then begin to pull the troops out. This resembles in some respects the "solution" to the Iraq situation, which conceivably still could work. The idea seems to be that a nation torn apart by centuries of religious, ethnic, and tribal differences can and will pull itself together if given a timetable for withdrawel, support in developing new democratic institutions, and the promise of control of its own destiny. But will the Iraqi or the Afghan people will take responsibility for their own fate if they know that soon all the foreign troops will leave? The answer is still unclear in Iraq. On the positive side it was long a secular state (albeit a dictatorship) and the presence of vast oil reserves gives it an economic foundation and a good reason not to let civil war paralyze exports. On the negative side, the Kurds want indepdence, the religious factions tend to kill each other, and Iran is not a model neighbor.

Unhappily, things are less promising in Afghanistan, which is a far less developed country than Iraq. Under the Taliban it had one of the world's most repressive, fundamentalist regimes. And it does not have oil. Rather, the proverbial undiscussed elephant in the room, and a rather sweaty demanding elephant at that, is the drug traffic that has been a central part of the Afghan economy for a long time. Afghanistan produces about 90% of the world's opium. Worse, the size of the poppy crop has been growing not shrinking. (For more about that click here)

This is not a new or casual illegal business, nor one that be eradicated easily. Profits from opium sales are a central source of funds for the Taliban and also for semi-autonomous local leaders. Farmers can make more money growing poppies than anything else, and if they do so they also gain protection from powerful neighbors.

However, the Obama speech about Afghanistan did not discuss this aspect of the problem very much. In one passage declared, "To advance security, opportunity, and justice - not just in Kabul , but from the bottom up in the provinces - we need agricultural specialists and educators; engineers and lawyers. That is how we can help the Afghan government serve its people, and develop an economy that isn't dominated by illicit drugs."

This is surely correct. At least in theory something like a special Peace Corps for Afghanistan ought to have been part of the Afghan strategy from the beginning. George Bush failed at the arts of peace in both Iraq and Afghanistan, however, leaving Obama with two very large problems to solve without much capital to do it after saving a collapsing banking system.

But where are these agricultural specialists and educators and engineers going to come from? How can they work effectively in an environment permeated by the opium trade? Who will protect them day to day? Who is going to pay their salaries and guarantee them medical treatment for the rest of their lives if they are maimed or wounded? Unemployment may be high, but it will be hard to recruit people for such dangerous work. Yet it is essential work. If Afghanistan remains focused on producing opium, it will have a large renegade economy that pays no taxes, works against the state, and funds war lords and insurgents.

Republicans Spent Much More on Iraq War Than Obama Wants for Stimulus Package

After the American Century

Those who thought I was too hard on the Republican Party yesterday might want to read Paul Krugman's column today. He also feels that their proposal to substitute tax cuts for spending is a failed Bush policy.

Elsewhere in today's New York Times there is an interesting story about the Japanese economy during the 1990s, when it went into deflation. Then the Japanese government spent a great deal of money on economic stimulus, and there is considerable debate about whether this was successful or not. But one thing is clear. Not all stimulus money is equally effective. Money spent on infrastructure gave the least bang for the yen, while money spent on education was the most beneficial. The test should be whether spending will develop new skills (education), new capacities (spreading broadband more widely), or renew the population (e.g. preventive health care). Such things make the economy more resilient. The least effective way to stimulate the economy is to build more weapons. A row of tanks worth a billion dollars for the most part just sits there, and never creates any new wealth.

However, if you a Republican, then a row of tanks represents a chance to wreck not just one economy, but two, as the economic cost of the Iraq war comes to mind. According to an article in the Washington Post last March, the total cost of that conflict will be more than $1.5 trillion, perhaps even as high as $3 trillion. Thus the Republican Party gladly spent at least twice as much on that war as the Democrats want to use to stimulate the American economy. Is there any logic to Republican thinking? The Republicans have destroyed billions in resources in the deserts of the Middle East, but they will not invest in the future of their own country. They have used billions to defend access to foreign oil, but they will not spend money on green energy which could free the US from dependence on that oil.

A paranoid on the far right might think that subversives (call them economic terrorsits) who hate the United States have infiltrated the Republican Party and twisted its thinking so it will embrace policies that are destructive to the United States. Not being anywhere near that paranoid, I can only conclude that the Republicans are illogical and that they choose badly.

Was McCain the Bomber Pilot a Hero? Republicans and Vietnam

After the American Century

The Republican Party has never come to terms with the Vietnam War, as the McCain candidacy underscores. For as Ronald Reagan once put it, Vietnam was a "noble cause," to considerable right-wing applause. Standing at the then new Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, he declared, "who can doubt that the cause for which our men fought was just?" I can. What Reagan said was pseudo-patriotic nonsense. Which part of the Vietnam War was noble? Was it noble to pretend that the Vietnamese War was about communism, when it began as a nationalist uprising against the French colonial power? Was it noble to concoct a "domino theory" to justify the war, when area specialists at the time knew that it was not true? (Indeed, once the US lost the war, other nations did not "fall" into communism.) Was it noble to overthrow Diem and then support an unpopular South Vietnamese military regime? Was it noble to spray chemical defoliants, notably Agent Orange over large parts of the nation, poisoning both the habitat and US soldiers on the ground? Was dropping napalm on civilians noble? Was support for a wealthy landowning class against landless peasants a noble democratic aim? Was it noble to round up South Vietnamese into compounds and force them to live there rather than in their ancestral villages? Was it noble to be allied with a regime that at times shot prisoners, that was known to mistreat its prisoners, and even to throw them alive out of airplanes? Was it noble to bomb North Vietnam, attacking not only military targets but cities as well, killing thousands of civilians?

Let us focus on that last question, because the future Republican candidate John McCain was flying over North Vietnam in 1967. What was he doing there when he was shot down? People focus on McCain in a prisoner of war camp, but forget to ask why he was there, or whether the US war in Vietnam made any sense. Yes, he was shot down. Yes, he was mistreated. Yes, he suffered. But the Democrats have been reluctant to ask the real question: What was McCain's role in that unjust war, which was condemned by most European nations? Did he drop agent orange on agricultural lands? Did he drop napalm on villages? Did he bomb women and children? And just as importantly, what does McCain think of the Vietnam War today? Does he agree with Reagan's absurd idea that the war was a noble cause? Does he think that massive strategic bombing was a successful tactic? A morally defensible tactic? A good tactic in future wars? If so, then why did the US lose that war? Why did the US lose the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people? Has McCain, have the Republicans, any new ideas, or will they keep trying the same failed military "solutions"?

What does McCain think of the "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq? Does the United States want a president who jokes about bombing Iran, by intoning a Beach Boys tune as he warbles, "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran?" This might sound like a joke, but the threat of strategic bombing is the essense of McCain's foreign policy. There is nothing heroic or noble about dominating the air space over a nation, whether Vietnam or Iraq or Iran, and carpeting it with deadly bombs. That is why McCain is a dangerous choice for president, just as the Republicans are a dangerous party to entrust with foreign policy.

After eight years of George Bush, where in the world is the US in a sronger foreign policy position than it was in 2000? Not in Europe. Not in the Middle East. Not in China. Not in Latin America. Where is it more popular than in 2000? It is hard to make a case for many places. John McCain has a millitaristic conception of foreign affairs, and he is accompanied by a vice-presidential nominee who thinks the Iraq War is a holy mission.

Vietnam was not a noble cause, but an enormous mistake. McCain and the Republicans have never understood it, and remain prisoners of a distorted sense of history. That is why they are unfit to hold power.

McBush and Appeasement

After the American Century

Senator McCain has endorsed George Bush's attack on the Democrats for "appeasement." I will return to this, but only after looking at the many absurdies in this attack. Bush chose to go after the Democrats while making a state visit to Israel to mark the 60th anniversary of that nation's independence. Partisan attacks are to be expected from now on until the election, but it is poor form to go to another nation and distract attention from their celebrations to engage in electoral politics. However, where Bush made his statement had a special resonance when he chose to compare the Democrats to those who appeased Hitler. The implication was that if Americans elect Obama, they will be responsible for another holocaust. But there is no historical sense to these assertions.

It was the Republicans far, far more than FDR's Democrats, who were in the appeasement camp. In the 1930s many Americans, especially Republicans, wanted the nation to remain neutral. It was Roosevelt and the Democrats who have the more honorable record. Who wanted to negotiate with Hitler? Republican Senator Borah! Yes, that wonderful party leader who also helped to sabotage Wilson's League of Nations. He was from Bush's party.

And another thing. Just which leader or which nation today can realistically be compared to Hitler? Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust. They sponsor terrorist groups. Democrats and Republicans would all agree aboout these things. But Iran simply does not have the geopolitical clout that Germany had in the 1930s. Because we are talking about a nation, not an amorphous group of terrorists, they could conceivably be negotiated with. The Neo-Conservative Republicans seem to have forgotten that the Cold War was won not by arms, but by a much slower process of dialogue, trade, cultural interchange, and, yes, negotiation. The Berlin Wall came down without a shot being fired. Bush's continual refusal to talk to Iran's leaders has pushed them into the willing arms of the Russians, who are happy to help them build oil and gas pipelines and trade with them. Furthermore, many in Washington, even some Republicans, have come to recognize that it will be impossible to forge a peace in Iraq without somehow involving the Iranians.

Leaving aside historical analogies, Bush himself has at times been a negotiator, so that must make him "an appeaser." At almost the very moment the President was declaring one should never negotiate with terrorists, his administration announced that it was sending massive food aid to North Korea. This is part of the complex negotiations that have, with some success, sought to turn that nation away from its nuclear program. Thus Bush's own administration has been doing the very thing for which he criticized the Democrats.

Bush is trying to distract attention from his foreign policy failures. But his shoot-first-preemptive-strike-cowboy approach to the world has not yielded success in Afghanistan or Iraq. His administration arrogantly refused to listen to its allies. France and Germany both tried to dissuade him from invading Iraq, but Bush told the world that US intelligence information was more reliable than theirs and charged ahead. However, the French and the Germans got it right. There was no pressing national security reason to rush into that war. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Bush either lied or his intelligence services were incompetent. Either way, it was an expensive mistake that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people, the vast majority civilians. The Iraq War has increased instability in the Middle East and served as a training ground for terrorists. Bush's interventionism has also indirectly driven up the cost of oil, because the Iraqui oil fields are not producing as much as they might. Anyone who thinks the US is more secure or better off economically than it was before the invasion of Iraq has not been paying attention.

John McCain had an oportunity to show he was not like the President, but he has endorsed Bush's attack on the Democrats. So much for his claims to represent "straight talk." Perhaps the fall ballots should read "McBush" so voters will know what he represents. For McCain's remarks show once again that he is a throwback from another age, living in the mental universe of the Cold War where he was trained as a military man. McCain by temperment and education is not prepared to be a negotiator or to understand the world as a complex place. He is the candidate who thought it was funny to sing "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran" to a Beach Boys tune. He is unfit to be President precisely because he has all that Cold War and Vietnam military experience. The world is a different place now.

Finally, suppose we were to evaluate Bush by his own Rambo standards. Seven years after the 9/11 attacks, he has been unable to find Osama bin Laden. By any measure, he has been a miserable failure.

How Moderate is McCain?

After the American Century

Writing on Super Tuesday before any votes have yet been cast, I shall say nothing about the exciting Democratic contest, except that Obama seems to have momentum, rising in the polls each day. He might surprise Hillary in California. But more about that tomorrow. Today it is time to think about the Republicans, who apparently will make John McCain their nominee. It may not happen in a formal sense on Super Tuesday, but all the polls suggest that his competition will fall so short that the race will effectively be over. Huckabee may win a state or two in the South, no more. Romney will apparently run second in many states, though he should win at least Massachusetts, his home state.

It is therefore time to look more closely at McCain, and ask what his positions are. Is he really a moderate? For my European readers, I should say that compared to the Scandinavian or German politicians, he is off the scale to the right on many issues. No one with his views would have a shadow of a chance of leading any of these nations.

The American media's image of McCain, however, is that he is a moderate compared to the other Republican candidates. He is also perceived as something of a maverick, unwilling to toe the party line. It is true that he has not been a knee-jerk supporter of Bush's foreign policy. He is not a Bible-thumping fundamentalist like Huckabee, and he does not quote the Book of Genesis on the campaign trail. He admits that climate change is real (though he argues that nuclear power is the remedy). And he has supported stem-cell research, along with that wild-eyed radical Nancy Reagan. But on most of the issues McCain is quite conservative. Consider the following examples.

Abortion. McCain consistently has called the Supreme Court decision that legalized avortion, Roe vs. Wade, a mistake. He said again in the California debate last week that he would appoint "strict constructionists" to the courts. In American political code, this means he wants judges to stay away from legislating from the bench, particularly on abortion. McCain considers the "right to life" to be a human rights issue, and he has voted consistently on this issue. For example, he supports punishing doctors who perform abortions.

Iraq. McCain wants to fight the war as long as it takes. As a Vietnam War veteran who was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, he has strong feelings on this issue. He has said the United States should stay in Iraq for 100 years, if necessary. Note that McCain went to the Naval Academy for his education, as did his father, his grandfather, and his son. By comparison, Bush was not trained as an officer. He served briefly in the National Guard and never saw combat. McCain is a warrior by instinct. He is also reputed to have a fierce temper.

The Arts. McCain would eliminate Federal spending on the arts and humanities. This is a symbolic issue, as annual Federal arts funding is less than the Iraq War costs every single day.

Civil Rights. McCain wants to keep the Federal government out of rights issues and leave them to the states. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) consistently has rated McCain as hostile to civil rights. In 2002, for example, McCain had the lowest possible score (0%) in their annual rating of candidates on civil rights issues. Nevertheless, at times his conservatism can lead him to vote with liberals on specific issues. On gay marriage, for example, he has voted against a federal ban, saying that imposing this from Washington is inconsistent with Republican principles.

Evolution. McCain would allow the decision about teaching "Creationism" to be made in each school district. No Federal imposition of the teaching of Darwin would be allowed.

Death Penalty. McCain supports the death penalty, and would have it extend to drug dealers. He would increase spending for Federal prisons.

Drugs. McCain strongly opposes any legalization of marijuana, which he sees as an addictive, "gateway drug" that leads to more powerful drugs.

Energy. McCain has voted against achieving energy independence, even though he rhetorically supports that idea. He has opposed putting research money into alternative fuels, and he has opposed federally supported development of ethanol as a partial substitute for oil. The Campaign for America's Future (CAF) rates law-makers' voting records on bills dealing with energy independence, and they give McCain only a 17% rating. That is quite low compared to Clinton and Obama, both of whom CAF rated at 100%.

McCain's positions are what passes for "moderate" in the Republican Party, which suggests how far to the right the other candidates are. On all of these issues, the Democratic Party has a different stance. Internal party differences between Obama and Clinton pale to insignificance by contrast.

In short, do not be deceived by the assiduously cultivated "marverick" image of John McCain. On most issues, he is not a moderate. Rather, he is much like the George Bush that has emerged during his second term. Bush too now admits that global warming is real and that the US is "addicted to oil," while doing little about either of these problems. He too wants to stay in Iraq, pack the Supreme Court with strict constructionists, keep the death penalty, encourage the Creationists, and discourage those pressing for Civil Rights. McCain does smile more, but he is a real warrior and a real conservative.

The interesting question becomes, will this conservative McCain become visible to the voting public by November, or will he still be perceived as a moderate maverick?

Moby Bush and The Great Saddam Whale

On April 2, 2003 I sent a short opinion piece out to several US newspapers, criticizing the Bush Administration's planned war on Iraq. None would print it. Criticism of the Bush Government was still not widespread in the media, though hundreds of thousands of people were protesting the planned invasion in the streets of New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and other cities around the nation. At the time I was a visiting professor at Notre Dame University, and I had followed the build up to the Iraq War quite carefully. I was against the invasion then, but I could not have imagined how thoroughly the Bush Administration was going to bungle their "peace keeping" once the invasion was over. Subsequent events showed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and was not making any. This seemed likely to be the case to many people at the time, not least to the inspectors who were on the ground. Recall that Colin Powell went to the UN and, we now know, lied, claiming that the US had superior intelligence to that possessed by the French and the Germans. Today, we know that they were right and the US was wrong. But even at that time, I felt that the nation was going absolutely in the wrong direction. And so I wrote the piece now published here. Warning: If you have not read Herman Melville's Moby Dick, then the literary parallels between Ahab and George W. Bush will be lost on you.  On board the Pequod II The Pequod II shipped out in 2001 with the new captain, whom we did not know well, but he was rumored to be compassionate. In the first long months of the voyage he kept himself mostly below, in the Texas, letting others steer the ship while he plotted his unilateral course. Then he emerged in the midst of a storm and addressed his officers and crew. He called on all to join in a quest to make the seas safe for whalers and to assure civilization a steady supply of sperm oil, by hunting down and slaying the Great Saddam Whale. Captains from passing French, German, and Russian ships warned him to hunt only normal prey, but he ignored them. For his mind was fixed on an earlier encounter with that great whale, whom he believed once tried to kill his father, and whom he saw as the very incarnation of evil. Indeed, he spoke of an "axis of evil" that included Iran and North Korea, making up a strange triumvirate that had no alliances with one another. Can First Mate Starbuck Powell stand up to the Captain's extravagance, and steer us into safer waters? Or is his goodness ultimately no match for monomania? Will the frowning captain accept advice to change course from the smiling second mate, Tony "Stubb" Blair? Can the captain heed advice, or is this course become a destiny? We cannot expect restraint from third mate Flask Rumsfeld, who is cheerfully certain he can kill all whales that spout in any gulf. Below decks are wolfish planners who steel Bush's will for the fiery chase. First, they promise an easy chase and quick victory. Have we not harpoons with satellite guidance? Now, they counsel patient pursuit. We will bring democracy and progress to the Middle East fishery. There be also readers of Revelation on board, who look to scripture and conclude that the confrontation with the Great Whore of Babylon has come. This will be the last day of judgement against the infidels.  The Pequod sails on a profitless voyage into a rising storm. In his quest to destroy the Great Sadddam Whale the Captain risks his cargo, insults his allies, kills innocent people, and creates new enemies. I am a involuntary Ishmael on this voyage. My cry for war did not go up with the rest. I don't want to end up clinging to my best friend's coffin. +++++ I see no need to change this more than 1700 days later. Melville was not, of course, writing about George Bush. But he had seen men like him and was able to imagine an apocalyptic scenario.  Bush's foreign policy has been a catastrophe for United States. If we are fortunate enough to have wise leadership after the next election, by which I mean leaders who do not act unilaterally but listen to their allies, it will still take at least a generation for the nation to regain  the moral stature it had abroad at the end of the Clinton years. Sadly, however, it is possible that during the last decade the US has squandered a great historical opportunity for world leadership that will not come again.