Clinton Then and Now on Iraq Withdrawal

Hillary today:

Today I’d like to talk about how I will do that, how as president, I will bring our troops home, work to bring stability in the region, and replace military force with a new diplomatic initiative to engage countries around the world in helping to secure Iraq’s future.

The most important part of my plan is the first step, to bring our troops home and send the strongest possible message to the Iraqis that they must take responsibly for their own future. No more talk of permanent occupation, no more policing a civil war, no more doing for the Iraqis what they need to be doing for themselves. As president, one of my first official actions will be to convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my Secretary of Defense and my National Security Council and direct them to draw up a clear, viable plan to start bringing our troops home within the first 60 days of my taking office. A plan based on my consultation with the military to remove one to two brigades a month, a plan that reduces the risks of attack as they depart.

Sounds pretty clear that she's referring to a full and complete withdrawal. And yet it doesn't match what she said a year ago. That's fine, things change. But in the same speech today she attacked Obama for certain perceived inconsistencies in his position--specifically the fact that his former advisor Samantha Powers nuanced Obama's position by explaining that President Obama's plan would have to be coordinated with key advisors and based on facts on the ground.

Well, Clinton's position today is less nuanced than it was a year ago. While she attacks Obama for not really meaning it when he says he'd withdraw troops, Clinton herself has changed her own position in ways that make one wonder if she's being disingenuous.

I think we have remaining vital national security interests in Iraq, and I’ve spoken about that on many different occasions.

I think it really does matter whether you have a failed province or a region that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda. It is right in the heart of the oil region. It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel’s interests.

So I think we have a remaining military as well as political mission, trying to contain the extremists.

I think we have a vital national security interest and obligation to try to help the Kurds manage their various problems in the north so that one of our allies, Turkey, is not inflamed, and they are able to continue with their autonomy. I think we have a vital national security interest — if the Iraqis ever get their act together — to continue to provide logistical support, air support, training support. I don’t know that that is going to be feasible, but I would certainly entertain it. And I think we have a continuing vital national security interest in trying to prevent Iran from crossing the border and having too much influence inside of Iraq.

Those are all different moving pieces on the chess board. And from the vantage point of where I sit now, I can tell you, in the absence of a very vigorous diplomatic effort on the political front and on the regional and international front, I think it is unlikely there’s going to be a stable situation that will be inherited.

And so it will be up to me to try to figure out how to protect those national security interests and continue to take our troops out of this urban warfare, which I think is a loser, and I do not believe that it can be successful. If we had done it right from the beginning, we might have had a fighting chance. We did not, and I think it is beyond our control now.

But what we can do is to almost take a line sort of north of, between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and basically put our troops into that region — the ones that are going to remain for our antiterrorism mission; for our northern support mission; for our ability to respond to the Iranians; and to continue to provide support, if called for, for the Iraqis.

It would appear that Clinton has adjusted her position to fit facts on the ground--the political facts of the domestic ground, and the need to match Obama's pledge to withdraw from Iraq. The interview from last year continues:

Q. So what you seem to be suggesting if I understand is a policy of maintaining American forces in Iraq, but redeploying them out of Baghdad and keeping them let’s say in areas where they could protect against Iranian infiltration, or stabilize Kurdistan, or possibly put them in Al Anbar — I don’t know if that’s part of your plan.

A. Well it is. Al Anbar is the likeliest candidate for the failed state scenario that will serve as the launching pad for Al Qaeda. That is their primary objective in terms of what they’re trying to achieve right now. It would be far fewer troops. We would not be doing patrols. We would not be kicking in doors. We would not be trying to insert ourselves in the middle between the various Shiite and Sunni factions. I do not think that is a smart or achievable mission for American forces.

So I think that we will have troops.

She thinks we will have troops.

Furthermore, Clinton has said in another interview that it is the preparation before she takes office that determines the ability to withdraw troops--clearly that preparation hasn't taken place, and won't, but that hasn't prevented Clinton from calling for immediate withdrawal.

Six months into a Hillary Clinton administration, about how many U.S. military personnel do you envision being in Iraq to handle what you've referred to in the past as "vital national security interests" -- from helping the Kurds to preventing Iran from crossing the border?

I cannot give you a figure because I will not become president until January 2009 and there is no way to predict what will occur between now and then. I have said repeatedly that I am committed to taking our combat troops out of the midst of this sectarian civil war. And there may well be vital national security interests that require a continuing presence, although I do not support permanent bases or a permanent occupation. When I'm elected -- and between the time that I am elected and the time I become president -- I will focus to a great extent (and nearly to the exclusion of a lot of other important matters) on being ready to make those decisions once I become president.

But it is just impossible to make any kind of credible predictions at this point. I am still hoping that the president will decide to follow the Iraq Study Group's recommendations and begin to alter the makeup and mission of our force before he leaves office. I think it is his responsibility to do that. So that's my principal emphasis during this time -- to try to persuade or require him to take the steps that I would have to do initially if he has not.

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The War's Toll On Cleveland

h/t Good Girl Roxie:

A graphic from The Nation shows the the war in Iraq has cost the city of Cleveland nearly $500 million, and shows what else the city could have done with that amount of money. Click through the link above.

Pretty startling.

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War Costs Ohio $11 Billion

h/t Left of Dayton

Rank States Amount
#1 California: $40,600,000,000.00
#2 New York: $26,500,000,000.00
#3 Texas: $25,600,000,000.00
#4 Illinois: $17,700,000,000.00
#5 Florida: $15,500,000,000.00
#6 New Jersey: $14,500,000,000.00
#7 Pennsylvania: $12,600,000,000.00
#8 Ohio: $11,500,000,000.00

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The Surge, Casualties, and "Success"

Lately every time I hear a war apologist like Sean Hannity on the radio or TV I hear how successful the surge is, and how the anti-war liberals have been quieted and their criticisms disproven by the success of the surge.

Here's what "success" looks like in Iraq today.

For starters, the situation in the North is as volatile as ever, as US ally Turkey moves into Iraqi Kurdistan unapologetically. The Kurds in Iraq believe--and it's hard to argue with them--that the US military is complicit in bombings of Iraqi positions and Turkish troop movements.

Meanwhile here are the casualty figures in Iraq as a whole:

-Iraqi civilian and security forces numbered 342 last month. That's keeping in mind, of course, that these numbers are based on news reports, and generally undercount the death totals.

-There have been 15 deaths of U. S. Servicemen in Iraq so far in December.

Today, a truck bomb exploded near a dam, and four Iraqis were killed in a Baghdad car bomb attack.

As the BBC reports, security is better, but life in Baghdad isn't.

Politically, Iraq remains a quagmire. The top Iraqi Kurd refused to meet with Condi Rice today, and as the USA Today editorialized, the progress on the political front has been non-existent:

On the Republican side, the White House has been busy making excuses for the Iraqi government's failure to move toward national reconciliation (which is the goal of the troop surge), and it has lowered the benchmarks for success to the level of irrelevance. That translates into reduced accountability, continued dependency and an open-ended commitment. Lowering the bar for the Iraqi government sends a message that Baghdad can enjoy security paid for in American lives, and reconstruction aid paid by America's taxpayers, and ignore its responsibilities.

And, the US has no plan for withdrawal, or any foreseeable way out, no plan to even reduce troops that were increased for the surge. The forces are stretched to the limit, and there's no end in sight.

This is what "success" has been reduced to in some minds. Violence is down, but not out, not by a long shot. Hundreds of Iraqi casualties and continued American deaths doesn't sound much like a success to me. Better? Sure. Success? No. To me, success will be a functioning Iraqi democracy, like we were promised, without U. S. troops to enforce security half a world away.

Essentially, the US has every single one of its fingers in the dyke. For now, it is only leaking a little. But one false move and the flood will come.

Doesn't sound like "success" to me.

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Repair Act

One of the most shameful things the Bush administration has done in Iraq--and there have been many shameful things--is to ignore the over one million Iraqi refugees created by the war. As I wrote last summer, a conference on the refugee crisis left Iraq's neighbors Jordan and Syria fuming. As they should: while they deal with a million refugees from Iraq, the US had as of last summer accepted fewer than 1,000 refugees. While recent progress has improved, the administration has still done very little to deal with the problem.


To make matters ever worse, the Bush administration is fighting efforts to naturalize/bring to the U. S. Iraqi translators who have assisted U. S. troops in Iraq. These translators in many cases are placed in an extremely dangerous position in Iraq, due to their assistance to U. S. military.

Fortunately, Steve Israel (D-New York) has introduced the REPAIR Act to try to deal with the Iraqi refugee problem. As NPR reported this morning (not yet available on line) he has the assistance of an Iraqi translator who has been telling his story in the halls of Congress.

Incredibly, infuriatingly, the Bush administration opposes any additional funds to assist Iraqi refugees, and the State Department has issued a position paper in opposition to the bill.

Here's a bit from the story at NPR on the REPAIR Act:

The administration's stand is this: that new bills add additional cost, and a refugee program is already in place with the United Nations, a position that makes Steve Israel fight all the harder for his bill. "I'm shocked by the State Department's opposition. You know, we need translators in Iraq. Frankly, what message are we sending potential translators, that when you risk your life, we're not going to help you come to the United States. The State Department is being penny wise and pound foolish in this."

There should be bipartisan concensus on this issue.

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Ohio Marine faces trial next week

The case of four Marines charged with a massacre in Haditha continues to be in the news, as trials begin for three men in the case, including an Ohio Marine.

Lt. Colonel Jeff Chassani is the highest ranking officer to face charges, and a lance corporal has also been ordered to face a court martial. The UK's Independent reports:

Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Chessani faces charges of dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order for allegedly failing accurately to report and investigate what happened after a roadside bomb killed a US marine on 19 November 2005. One of his men, Lance-Corporal Stephen Tatum, was also ordered to face a court martial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault.

The case has an interesting Ohio connection...see below.

Two of the men accused of killings in Haditha have had charges dropped, and another has had charges reduced to involuntary homicide. Finally, an Ohio Marine officer, Andrew Grayson, faces trial for obstruction of justice in connection to the case. Grayson was given the responsibility of investigating the incident, and is accused of deleting photographs of the dead and given false statements. But he's not going down quietly:

A Marine officer accused of failing to investigate Iraqi civilian deaths in Hadithah rejected a plea deal under which his charges would be dismissed in exchange for an admission that he covered up the killings, his attorney said.

1st Lt. Andrew Grayson is one of four officers who were charged with dereliction of duty for allegedly failing to probe the Nov. 19, 2005, assault that left 24 Iraqis dead.

Attorney Joseph Casas said Grayson has done nothing wrong, and the Marine said taking the deal would have been like selling his integrity.

“I was asked by the prosecution to fall on my sword for the greater good of the Marine Corps,” Grayson, 26, said in a brief statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. “The prosecution wanted me to distort the truth to fit their end goal.”

Grayson is set to go on trial next week. It'll be interesting to see how the evidence unfolds. As Rahul Mahajan explains, the trials so far have been a bit of a farce:

The hearings have been a circus. First of all, they were held in Camp Pendleton, California, rather than in Iraq, so the Iraqis who witnessed the events couldn't testify. Second, the families of the victims refused requests by military interrogators to exhume the bodies for forensic evidence. Third, Lt. Col. Paul Ware, who presided over the hearings, has been both excessively sympathetic to the defendants and excessively concerned with the effect that the verdicts will have on future Marine operations. Fourth, some rather odd plea bargains have been made.

Most recently, Ware recommended that all charges of murder (originally 13 counts) against Wuterich be dropped and replaced with charges of negligent homicide only for seven of the murdered women and children (many of them shot in their beds) -- and has added that he doesn't think Wuterich would be convicted on those charges either.

According to the testimony of fellow Marines, a week before the incident, Wuterich said that if something like that happened, they should kill everyone in the vicinity. Wuterich himself admitted to ordering his men breaking into the houses to "shoot first and ask questions later." And, contrary to Wuterich's claim that the first five men were running away after they got out of the car, Dela Cruz testified that the men "were just standing, looking around, had hands up."

Dela Cruz was given immunity for his testimony, but he may have deliberately made a hash of it, contradicting himself and at one time admitting that he was lying; events conspired nicely to get him and Wuterich both off.


At this point it isn't clear why Grayson is refusing to cop a plea. But it may be that he refuses to play the cat and mouse game that the others have, pleading to lesser charges in order to help the Marine Corps sweep the issue finally under the rug. It may also be that he doesn't want to accept blame in order to protect higher ups who may have ordered the cover-up. In any case, Grayson's trial appears to be one in which some really uncomfortable questions could end up being asked--and answered--about the Marine Corps' response to the Haditha killings. His trial and its ultimate outcome certainly bear watching.

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More on Blackwater: The Smoking Gun

Thanks to TPM I found this Blackwater astroturf blog. They have comments enabled but are clearly censoring them, since the site was linked by TPM but has no comments (whereas this site has plenty.) The post linked above was called "the smoking gun". Funny, I guess Blackwater knows all about smoking guns--the literal kind.

Someone is taking a paycheck to make these mercenaries look good. American PR at its finest. Amazing. And disgusting.

But here's the author's profile in his own words:

We're supporters of Blackwater USA, the heroic private security company that has lost more than two dozen of its own men while protecting American diplomats, VIPs and others in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. We set up this blog shortly after the September 16, 2007 incident in which terrorists attacked an American diplomatic convoy near Baghdad, because we were fed up with all the misleading media coverage.

Blackwater Reporting is another site dedicated to supposed inaccuracies in reporting about Blackwater. The comments indicate that the site was created pretty recently... about the time that the scandal broke around the firing on civilians in Baghdad. One of the posts on Blackwater Reporting insists that Blackwater employees are not mercenaries, in part because they provide "bodyguard" services and don't engage in hostilities. However, the site About Blackwater, a companion to Blackblawg, seems to contradict that assessment. One of the "heroic acts" attributed to Blackwater sure seems like "engaging in hostilities" to me.

On 23 Jan 07, Raven 7 was on venue at the Municipalities and Public Works Annex (MMPW) building. At approximately 1113 hours they reported receipt of heavy small arms fire. DOS Air Assets were contacted by RSO TOC and requested to provide aerial support. At 1118, the RSO Air Assets arrived in the vicinity of MMPW, and one round of SAF struck an RSO Air Asset door gunner in the cheek. At 1120, RSO Air Assets took their door gunner to the 28th CSH. This COM PSD member was pronounced KIA. During this engagement, the COM Tactical Support Teams (TST) 22, 23, 24 and 26 responded to the MMPW building to support the engaged COM PSD teams, and received heavy SAF while in route and on location. Army attack aviation and Striker units also responded to the MMPW building during this period. The Designated Marksman from Raven 7 on the roof of the MMPW venue remained engaged with a heavy volume of SAF.

At 1150, the RSO Air Assets returned to the scene and again received SAF. This caused one RSO Air Asset to land at Ministry of Health. The other RSO Air Asset (Hughes 530) crashed at MB 4318 8958, approximately 700 meters southeast of the Municipalities and Public Works Annex due to heavy SAF. This location was not confirmed until 1315. The search for the downed RSO Air Asset began immediately. During this search, U.S. Army, COM PSD, and RSO Air Assets were continuously engaged with heavy SAF. Additional RSO Air Assets were requested and responded to the vicinity of the last known location of the downed RSO Air Asset.

So are they mercenaries? According to Blackwater Reporting, the following definition determines whether, according to Geneva Conventions, one is a mercenary. You decide:

A mercenary is any person who:

(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;

(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities; SEE ABOVE

(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;

(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and

(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

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AP publishes name of 10 year old arson suspect against judge's orders

UPDATE: Since this was posted I've learned that the judge has lifted the gag order on reporting the juvenile's name.

A judge in Darke County today ordered media organizations not to release the name of a ten year old accused of starting a fire in Greenville that killed five, including the boy's mother. The boy has admitted to starting the fire, but with no intention of harming anyone. The case has dominated the Dayton media in recent days and has as I wrote yesterday shed some light on the state of poverty that exists in many small towns like Greenville.

The AP ignored the judge's order, and reported the boys' name anyway. And they've challenged the judge's ruling. The DDN reports:

In a separate motion, the Associated Press on Monday challenged McClurg's ruling last week that prohibited news organizations from using the boy's name or image in their news accounts. The AP motion claims that the prohibition represents prior restraint of the press.

Why file a motion when you plan to just ignore the judge's ruling anyway?

(Meanwhile the AP seems to be following the rest of the media in not publishing the names of Blackwater employees accused of murder in Baghdad. Here's another report that fails to report any names. Ten year old suspects: fair game. Blackwater employees: off limits.)

The case of the fire in Greenville gets worse and worse. The DDN's reporting indicates that the judge released the boy to the custody of his grandmother, an act of humane common sense in the midst of this tragedy. The DDN also indicates that the boy may have had his constitutional rights violated. He appears to have been questioned at length without the advice of a lawyer, or even a judge.

The boy's life is tragic enough at this point. Maybe AP could respect the boys' future and protect what's left to salvage of his childhood by not reporting his name. At the very least they could show him the same respect they've shown the average Blackwater mercenary.

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Blackwater and Habeas Corpus

When the final book is written about this dark period in our nation's history, two of its most sordid chapters will deal with the events of this week. Or maybe just one chapter, since the two stories are opposite sides of the same lawless coin. Imprinted on one side of the coin is "habeaus corpus," and on the other side "Blackwater."

Chris Dodd's effort to restore habeas corpus failed in the Senate, failing to give persons detained by the U. S. military a basic constitutional right that the military is supposedly fighting to protect, further condemning those detainees to perpetual and unchallenged imprisonment:

The amendment was sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, Senator Arlen Specter, who voted for the legislation that the amendment attempts to reverse, and Senator Chris Dodd, who blasted today's vote. "Each of us in the Senate faced a decision either to cast a vote in favor of helping to restore America's reputation in the world, or to help dig deeper the hole of utter disrespect for the rule of law that the Bush Administration has created. Unfortunately, too many of my colleagues chose the latter," he said.


Meanwhile, the Blackwater corporation, who seem to be bound by no laws whatsoever in Iraq, committed yet another U. S. taxpayer-funded atrocity, with the death toll currently standing at 20. A crime for which no one, it seems, will ever pay a price. National Public Radio produced an excellent report on the incident today, getting the views of people in Baghdad about the crime these American villains perpetrated on Sunday, and capturing the anger in their voices:

NPR witnessed a similar scenario two years ago. A State Department convoy, protected by Blackwater, raced out of a compound. Guards immediately shot at the car killing an old man, his son and his daughter-in-law. Blackwater said the car was driving erratically. A U.S. military investigation concluded Blackwater had used excessive force. No one was prosecuted.

Sunday's incident seems to be the final straw — not just for Iraq's prime minister, but for the public. Outrage was bubbling on the streets.

Karim Muhammed, who owns a furniture store, said he's seen people killed by foreign security companies. He said Iraqi officials should have done something about this a long time ago.

"Why do they consider American blood first class, and ours a cheap commodity?" Muhammed said. "Are they better than us?"

And Samir Samir said he fears the private security companies far more than the U.S. military.

"The U.S. military is subject to its own laws and monitoring," Samir said. "Who monitors the security companies?"

A traffic policeman working in downtown Baghdad, who asked not to be named, said he believes security companies shoot fast and freely. He said he desperately tries to clear the streets in front of them to save Iraqi lives.

"I have to empty the streets for them; otherwise, they would harm people," the policeman said.

Why do they consider American blood first rate, and ours a cheap commodity? An excellent question, prompted no doubt by the memories of the U. S. response to the loss of the lives of four American contractors in Falluja. The Blackwater employees were hanged from a bridge and burned in the early moments of the U. S. occupation of Iraq. We all remember the seige of Falluja that that crime necessitated, the outrage among the American public, the cries for revenge, the endless loop of the horrible crime playing on Fox and CNN. Why wouldn't an Iraqi wonder at the outrage wrought in the U. S. over the death of four Blackwater employees in contrast to the utter indifference over the deaths of 20 Iraqis at the hands of Blackwater employees?

The actions of Blackwater bring to mind the boastful tone of the President in 2003:

"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on," Bush said. "We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

It's the Blackwater company motto, a calling card that all 25,000 of their employees likely carry in their pockets wherever they roam in Iraq. Certainly it was the calling card of the nameless Blackwater employees who committed murder last week and will walk free in spite of it. (Where, by the way are their names? Where are their photos? Can they walk American streets anonymously for the rest of their lives with impunity?)

And yet, detainees in Guantanamo cannot even contest their detention. Something is wrong with this picture. Is it racism, nativism, nationalism, that allows middle easterners to be imprisoned without evidence or a trial? In history classes years from now, it will be another "how could they?" moment: how could they imprison Japanese citizens, how could they enslave people, how could they take away people's rights in the middle eastern wars and jail them indefinitely while outlaws roamed the streets of Baghdad like they were in the Wild West?

The detainees in Guantanamo have one thing in common with the murderers of Blackwater: neither group will get a trial.

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Running out of patience

Bush is supposed to announce tonight that he is supporting General David Petraeus' recommendations. That shouldn't be a surprise, considering that the White House wrote them.

Karl Rove is gone, but his spirit lives on in the West Wing. The speech tonight is pure Rovian gamesmanship. Instead of asking the country to maintain troop levels, he will play Santa Claus and announce troop reductions... although the "surge" that was supposed to last until September will now last a year, and the troop reduction will merely return troops to pre-surge levels, and keep them there until well into 2009. The other benefit of the Bush plan is that it allows him to bring troops home during the final months of the 2008 presidential election.

Of course, as always, Bush's plans are based on the rosiest scenarios, but when the casualties continue to mount and his pet project becomes more and more evidently a failure, he may change his plans. As the country grows weary of his war, he'll ask for more money, more troops, more of his famous resolve, and more patience--always more patience, putting off as long as possible the terrible realization of the war's ultimate failure.

He began his second term by urging patience on Iraq.

In June 2005, Bush urged patience and a long view on Iraq "in an address filled with references to September 11 and Osama bin Laden... Bush repeatedly linked the increasingly unpopular Iraq war with the 2001 attacks that galvanized the country against Al Qaeda and terrorism."

Here's Bush urging patience with Iraq Training 10 months later in Nov. 2005.

Around the third anniversary of the war in March 2006, Bush was still urging patience.

Here he is in June 2006, urging patience again.

In August 2006 Bush held a press conference to urge patience.

In October, Bush finally conceded missteps. But again he urged patience.

In Vietnam a few weeks later, Bush urged patience again.

On the second anniversary of his calling for more patience in 2005, Bush urged patience again as the war entered its fifth year.

In May 2007, "following a briefing by top U.S. military and civilian leaders at the Pentagon, President Bush urged patience to allow sufficient time for the Iraq strategy to succeed."

Two weeks ago, the headlines read: Iraq civiian deaths up, Bush urges patience.

If you click through all of those links, I think you'll be able to write tomorrow's headline. I think I'm sensing a pattern.

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We do body counts now, apparently

In regard to this, this, and this, I found myself wondering, when did we start doing body counts, exactly?

Remember Tommy Franks saying, "We don't do body counts"?

So when did we start?

Well, apparently we started in 2005, but I happened to have missed it:

Eager to demonstrate success in Iraq, the U.S. military has abandoned its previous refusal to publicize enemy body counts and now cites such numbers periodically to show the impact of some counterinsurgency operations.

The revival of body counts, a practice discredited during the Vietnam War, has apparently come without formal guidance from the Pentagon's leadership. Military spokesmen in Washington and Baghdad said they knew of no written directive detailing the circumstances under which such figures should be released or the steps that should be taken to ensure accuracy.

Maybe that's why Petreaus is not releasing the methodology used to calculate the drop in violence being attributed the surge, a drop in violence that is being measured in terms of the existential arithmatic of number of Iraqi lives lost. Because it would show how the military actually has calculated civilian casualties since 2005.

But since the military is apparently tracking these things now, and have been for about two years, here's the question I would like to see some brave soul ask the general in his testimony:

In the two years that the military has been keeping track, exactly how many civilian deaths have occurred in Iraq?

It also sounds like a pretty good question for Republican candidates in the youtube debate. Suppose any of them could answer it? Or care?

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Exit strategies

I've been out of town for the weekend, hence the light posting.

Read an interesting piece this weekend. Stanley Karp of Rethinking Schools has an excellent editorial on NCLB which is worth reading in its entirety.

But he makes the provocative comparison between NCLB and Iraq, suggesting we need an exit strategy for each. Here's a sample:

Like the original authorization for the Iraq war, NCLB was endorsed in Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. Bush built the NCLB coalition by merging the mainstream consensus around standards and tests with the conservative agenda of privatization and market reform, much as he was able to line up Democrats anxious to prove their national security credentials behind the neocon crusade to remake the world after 9/11.

"Leave no child behind" was a rhetorical counterpart to "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Though both policies have led to disasters of different dimensions and generated widespread popular opposition, Bush demands that we "stay the course" on both fronts. Unfortunately his would-be successors are failing to break with the premises of these policies in too many ways and limiting their ability to offer real alternatives.

For instance, speaking to an audience of teachers in New Hampshire last March, Clinton passionately bashed NCLB. "While the children are getting good at filling in all those little bubbles, what exactly are they really learning?" she asked. "How much creativity are we losing? How much of our children's passion is being killed?" She also denounced NCLB's supplemental tutoring sanctions which funnel federal funds to largely unregulated private providers, declaring, "This is Halliburton all over again ...We have these contracts going to these cronies who are chosen largely on a political basis, and we have nothing to show for it."

Tough words. But Clinton voted for the law in 2001. In fact she helped lay the groundwork for it by supporting two decades of summits and business roundtables that enshrined top-down standards and tests as the keys to school improvement. Clinton has blamed all NCLB's failures on mismanagement and underfunding from the Bush Administration, but when not on the stump, she admits she'll vote for reauthorizing it with vague allusion to unspecified "improvements." Maybe Clinton still thinks it "takes a village to raise a child," but so far she's mainly voted for giving them tests.

Similarly, Obama tells his audiences, "No Child Left Behind left the money behind." But he also talks about "the things that were good about No Child Left Behind," like high standards "because U.S. children will have to compete for jobs with students from countries with more rigorous schools." Obama has flirted with vouchers ("I am not close-minded on this issue.") and merit pay, declaring teachers have "got to get more pay, but there's also going to be more accountability...the accountability can't just be based on standardized test performance only, but that has to be part of the mix..."

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Sunday Reading: The Sirens of Baghdad

The Sirens of Baghdad by Yasmina Khadra (Mohammed Moulessehoul) is the third in a trilogy. The previous two novels have also been discussed at this site: The Swallows of Kabul (discussed in an essay on women and Islam) and The Attack.

Yasmina Khadra's most recent novel tells the story of a young Bedouin man in a desert village of Iraq. Although he is forced to return to Kafr Karam, his village, from the university in Baghdad when the Americans invade Iraq, life in his village remains relatively unaffected by the war until insurgent activity draws the interest of the Americans in the region. First, an air attacks disrupts a wedding party, killing several. When the Americans arrive in his village and invade, they perpetrate an outrage upon the young man's dignity and familial honor, which he can only repay with an act of vengeance. The Americans crash through the home, looking for a supposed weapons cache or any sign of insurgency:

Hellish insults erupted from the end of the hall. My mother, ejected from her room, immediately collected herself and went to help her invalid husband. "Leave him alone. He's sick." Soldiers brought out the old man. I'd never seen him in such a state. With his threadbare undershirt hanging loosely from his thin shoulders and his stretched out drawers fallen nearly to his knees, he was the very image of boundless distress, walking misery, an affront personified toin all its absolute boorishness.

The resulting image of his father's manhood, exposed ridiculously after the American soldiers knock him to the ground, is the final straw for the young man. After the indignities suffered that night, the young man leaves Kafr Karam without so much as a word to his family, his sister excepted, to make an attack on the Americans. Anything less, he insists, would make him ashamed to be seen in his village.


He makes his way to Baghdad where he nearly starves before being taken in by his cousin Omar. His cousin quickly assesses what he is about and tries to talk him out of a rash action that would harm his fellow Iraqis rather than his intended American victims. Omar, who has seen much in Baghdad, counsels his friend:

"...you have to know exactly what you're getting into. You see what the resistance does every day. It's killed thousands of Iraqis. In exchange for how many Americans? If the answer to that qeustion doesn't matter to you, then that's yorur problem. But as for me, I disagree."

This kind of dialectic is found frequently in Khadra's novels, especially the two most recent ones, as characters talk about terrorism, Muslim identity, and the West.

Through Omar's help, the young man lands with some other friends from Kafr Karam who are active in the insurgency. A warehouse that acts as a front for their bomb making operation provides the young man with a salary and a job while he awaits his opportunity to exact revenge on the West. Eventually the opportunity comes in the form of a dramatic terrorist that "will make September 11th seem like a noisy recess at an elementary school." As the young man arrives in Beirut and makes final preparations for the attack, his confidence never wavers, at least not until the novel's final moments.

The third novel in Khadra's trilogy bears the closest resemblance to the second, The Attack. Both novels are told as a flashback, as the opening pages describe an attack (or impending attack) which the rest of the novel leads up to chronologically. And both novels take the reader into the mechanics as well as the psychology of terrorists. Both novels show sympathy to the grievances that motivate those, called terrorists by the West, who see themselves as revolutionary warriors fighting against the oppression of Judeo-Christian powers. In The Attack, the main character was, however, a Westernized Arab definitively opposed to the self-destructive mindset of the terrorist, and he sought in the novel to challenge that mindset, to confront the actors face-to-face as if to say, like Laertes to Hamlet, "thus didst thou." Sirens, by contrast, is told from the point of view of a would-be killer, single-mindedly devout in his pursuit of destruction.

Therein lies the novel's flaw. The young man is so single minded in pursuit of his cause, so unflinching as to be implausible. He is too sensitive, too warm and good a man to not face doubts in pursuit of his cause. In the early parts of the novel, he vomits at the sight of any violence, and he admits to being girlish in his ability to cry, which he does more than his sister. Still, at no time in the novel, prior to the dramatic conclusion, does he express any doubt about the righteousness of his cause and the innocent deaths that could result. As Janet Maslin of the Times writes, "The cumulative effect of these events (the violence of Kafr Karam) turns the narrator into a numb yet still melodramatic automaton, ready to be used by the forces of terrorism and vengeance." And it simply doesn't feel right. Outwardly, in conversations with other characters, the young man is so stone faced about his determination for vengeance that he doesn't even acknowledge the possibility of failure or doubt. But even to the reader, the self doubt we expect, and which would make the ending more fitting, never is revealed.

In all, the moderate, sensible, western-oriented Muslim intellectuals who appear in Khadra's novels--like the narrator in The Attack, Zunaira in Swallows of Kabul, or Jalal in this novel (although Jalal has radicalized to jihad, he maintains his rationality in the face of large-scale annihilation, a rationality that plays a critical role in the novel)--are more like Khadra himself, and so the murderer's persona in Sirens of Baghdad seems a little artificial and forced.

But all three novels, set in the Muslim world's most dangerous places--Kabul, Baghdad, and the West Bank--are brilliant narratives, examining with honesty and sensitivity the fractures within the Muslim world and its relationship to the West.

Links, and an excerpt

The Guardian: Khadra expertly evokes an urban atmosphere of paranoia and random destruction. There is one particularly telling scene on the road to Baghdad in which people in a traffic jam watch a US helicopter fire two rockets at nothing in particular ("we saw two masses of flames and dust rise over a ridge") - an image reminiscent of the moment in Heart of Darkness when Marlow observes a warship dully shelling the jungle, firing blind into the dark continent. Throughout the novel, the tension between the narrator's home environment and his adopted world of mechanised destruction is subtly emphasised by means of natural imagery, as when he and another character say goodbye: "We part without pats or embraces, like two rivulets spilling off a rock."

The Telegraph: While village life in the desert is ably captured, it is hard for Khadra's depiction of occupied Baghdad to compete with the depressingly vivid depictions of the place in our nightly news footage. Much of the second half of the novel is devoted to long Islamist monologues - zealotry that might have been lifted wholesale from a jihadi video posted on the web.

More dissatisfying than the set-piece quality of these diatribes is their language, whose overly European character somehow doesn't ring true. The problem seems deeper than that of mere translation. Speaking of Westerners, one radical rants: "They're just infuriated retards, smashing valuable things, like buffalo let loose in a porcelain shop… Violence and hatred sum up their history; Machiavellianism shapes and justifies their initiatives and their ambitions. What can they comprehend of our world, which has produced the most fabulous pages in the history of human civilisation? Our fundamental values are still intact; our oaths are unbroken; our traditional points of reference remain the same."

A "buffalo in a porcelain shop" is just a hasty rewording of "bull in a china shop". Machiavelli is a curious allusion in a part of the world that hardly lacks for scheming tyrants. Even "traditional points of reference" sounds straight out of Western academia.

I can't seem to get on the same page with the Times, with whom I disagreed on Khadra's previous (brilliant) novel, The Attack, and now this. This is just WRONG (at least in regards to The Attack)! IMHO:

If “The Swallows of Kabul” remains the most wrenching and imaginative book in this trilogy, “The Attack” now seems the most artificial and didactic. “The Sirens of Baghdad” falls somewhere in between, with a blunt story line that has real passion behind it. The author’s ear for Iraqi despair, fury and violation is keen, even as he manipulates the book’s ideological posturing to reflect different points of view. In the end, this cautionary tale sounds more like real history.

A smart pairing: The Reluctant Fundamentalist and The Siren's of Baghdad in Baltimore's City Paper

A note on the following excerpt: The Americans are portrayed as monsters in this novel. They are seen from Iraqi eyes, as gun weilding maniacs constantly on edge. The Iraqi police fare only slightly better: corrupt, but culturally aware at least. In the early part of the novel, still set in Kafr Karam, the blacksmith's son, who seems to be autistic or slow, cuts his fingers off in an accident, and the narrator attempts to drive the injured man and his father to the clinic. At an American checkpoint, the injured man panics and is shot by the American guards. In the following passage, the narrator returns home with the father of the deceased:

A police car took us back to the village. I didn't completely grasp what was happening. I was inside a sort of evanescent bubble, sometimes suspended in a void, sometimes fraying apart like a cloud of smoke. I remembered clearly the mother's unbearable cry when the blacksmith returned home. Immediately, a crowd gathered, dazed, and incredulous. The old struck their hands together, devastated; the young were outraged. I reached my house in a lamentable state. The moment I stepped over the threshold and into the patio, my father, who was dozing at the foot of his indefinable tree, started in his sleep. He'd understood at once that something bad had happened. My mother didn't have the courage to ask me what the matter was; she settled for putting her hands on her cheeks. My sisters came running with kids clinging to their skirts. Outside the first howls began, somber lamentations heavy with anger and passion. My sister Bahia took me by the arm and helped me to my rooftop room. She laid me down on my pallet, brought me a basin of water, took off my filthy vomit-stained shirt, and started washing me from the waist up. Meanwhile, the news spread through the village, and our entire family went to condole with the blacksmith and his household. After putting me to bed for the evening, Bahia left to join them, and I fell asleep.

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Things I don't understand

I'm going to ask a question here that may expose my ignorance, but I'm going to ask it anyway. How can we "win" a civil war in Iraq? Why is there so much discussion about "victory"? Isn't that the wrong question to be asking?

Brilliant article today out of Belfast, of all places. Well, they know a thing or two about civil war there. Anyway, read this:

Long, bloodstained years were to pass before the realisation began to dawn that neither Britain nor the IRA were ever going to surrender to each other. The recognition of this reality did not end the violence: that continued for many more years. But it led to a period of brooding introspection, much of it among imprisoned activists, as various elements came to grips with a central question: if victory is not possible, then what is?


For most, this was an unwelcome question, but as time went by it became an inescapable issue. Eventually this led on to dialogue across different groups.

Go read the rest of the article, then email it to your favorite member of Congress.

When we look at Northern Ireland we can begin to see why the Bush strategy, and why the surge, isn't going to work. Peace didn't come to Northern Ireland once the UK finally had enough troops on the ground. It came when there was a smart, tough political solution to stop the violence. The more Bush listens (or pretends to) to his generals, the more off track we become. We can't fight our way out of this mess.

Even Kissinger knows we can't win.

When has a military approach to terrorism ever worked in modern history? When we start seeing the problems in Iraq through a non-military lens, we'll be much further along and closer to solving the violence there.

But somehow arming the Sunni militias is supposed to solve...what? Another thing I don't understand.

When do we begin negotiating with the warring parties in Iraq?

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U. S. refuses to assist Iraqi refugees they displaced

This is criminal.

A recent conference in Jordan on the status of some 2,000,000 refugees from Iraq left participants from Jordan and Syria infuriated by continued U. S. inaction.

The U. S. has to this point accepted only about 700 Iraqis into the U. S. in the past four years, and fewer than 200 in the last 9 months, after the Bush administration promised to admit 7,000 this year So far, well behind schedule.

There can only be one explanation: accepting refugees from Iraq would be tantamount to admitting that Iraq is a hellhole from which any rational person would want to escape.

So Iraq's neighbors are forced to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees, without any aid from the U. S. Details below.



From Uruknet:

An international conference held on July 26 in Jordan to address the refugee crisis produced by the US occupation of Iraq exemplified the callous indifference of the Bush administration and its allies toward the catastrophe they have created.

More than four million Iraqis have been displaced externally and internally, yet the invading powers have accepted a handful of refugees and provided a pittance in aid. Even as Iraq sinks further into disaster, the final conference statement vacuously declared: "The real and effective solution to the problem... is their return to their country."

The article explains that the U. S. has promised about $3 per refugee in aid.

Meanwhile, the Democrats led by Earl Blumenauer of Oregon have proposed admitting 20,000 Iraqis into the U. S. The bill would fund the program and provide centers in Iraq to process the refugees.

The Uruknet article concludes:

The transformation of millions of Iraqis into homeless exiles is a war crime for which those who planned, propagandised and carried out the war are responsible. Reversing the catastrophe requires a massive program of compensation and economic aid funded by the invading powers and the corporations that have made huge profits from the war.

Be sure to read the whole thing. It's very powerful.

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Buried stories of the week

I'm not sure what the arming of Sunni militias is supposed to accomplish, other than infuriating al-Maliki:

The prime minister has complained to President Bush about the policy of arming Sunnis, said the Sadrist lawmaker.

"He told Bush that if Petraeus continues doing that, he would arm Shiite militias. Bush told al-Maliki to calm down," according to this parliament member, who said he was told of the exchange by al-Maliki.

This policy has turned Maliki against Petraeus and compelled Maliki to demand U. S. withdrawal. And it also seems to be a clear indication by the Bush administration that they have no faith in Iraqi forces, and that they are desperate for anything to stem the violence.

Meanwhile, a third country may be on the brink of going nuclear under dubya's watch. The always reliable Microdot, reporting from France, tells us what the U. S. press has failed to about Bush's right wing comrade Sarkozy and how he is paying off Libya for releasing 6 Bulgarian health worker who had been more or less kidnapped by the terrorist regime:

Khadafy got his 450 million dollar ransom, though I would think that most of it was accounting magic. A lot of Libya's debt will be forgiven.
France on the other hand was doing a lot more than getting hostages released. Now that Libya is allowed to become a part of the civilized world and relationships are normalized, Sarkozy was representing the big French Corporations and negotiated a deal for a new major French built Autoroute and surprise! France is going to build a nuclear plant for Libya. It's a "safe, nice" nuclear plant to be used only for the desalinization of water.

Nah, that won't encourage other rogue regimes to kidnap Westerners in hopes of getting a big payday.

Things seem to be going from bad to worse.

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Suddenly, It's All About the Iraqis

Suddenly, thanks to Jake Tapper, the buzz on the right is, "what about the Iraqis?"

Tapper asked, I think, a pretty fair question to Harry Reid:

Senator Reid, what do you say to critics who say, "Look, the Senate voted, including two of you up on the stage, to authorize the president to use force in Iraq. Is there not a moral obligation of the United States to make sure that the Iraqi people are safe before the U.S. withdraws"?

I don't necessarily think that's an unfair question, and it's one that deserves an answer. I'll provide mine at the end of the post.

But it's interesting to see the right wing pencil warriors take up the phrase, "what about the Iraqis."


A few blogs linked to the Tapper piece, like Powerline, GOP USA, and K-Lo at the Corner with commetary tut-tutting the Democrats and Reid for not caring about the Iraqi people. I have no interest in linking to those larger blogs, but the conservative blogger Mensa Barbie highlighted this bit from the Powerline commentary:

Short form:
We are now holding a tiger by the tail.
It doesn’t really matter whether it was a good idea to grab the tiger by the tail.
But it’s a REALLY bad idea to “solve the problem” by...

"LETTING GO OF THE TAIL!"

Where were these people and where was their concern for the Iraqis when everyone from the President on down was talking about "fighting them there so we don't fight them here"? Up until now, the philosophy we heard from the right was that we don't mind turning their country into a war zone to protect ourselves, but now we're supposed to buy their newfound concern for the Iraqi people? Here's what Scott McClellan said in 2005:

And we'll continue to take the fight to the enemy. That's why we're fighting them in Iraq, and we're not fighting them here at home. We're fighting them in Iraq so that we can defeat them abroad, so we don't have to fight them here at home.

I don't recall hearing from the right wing pencil warriors about their deep concern for the well being of the Iraqi people at that time.

When the Abu Ghraib story broke, the concern from the right wasn't for the Iraqi people. It was for the media that had the unpatriotic audacity to actually report the story.

One of the first to complain was talk radio's Rush Limbaugh, who accused the New York Times and others of using the scandal as a battering ram on the Bush administration. In May, Limbaugh told his 20 million weekly listeners that mainstream journalists felt threatened by talk radio, conservative bloggers and Fox News Channel. "Now they're feeling their oats again. They're all pumped up like Arnold Schwarzenegger was on steroids," he said. Limbaugh dismissed the behavior at Abu Ghraib as military personnel having a good time and blowing off some steam.

The host of Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" had a similar take. On May 27, Bill O'Reilly opened a show by asking, "Have the New York Times and the L.A. Times declared war on the Bush administration?" He noted that the Los Angeles Times had put Abu Ghraib on its front page "26 out of the past 28 days." "Does this story rate that kind of coverage? You decide," O'Reilly told his audience.

Around the same time, Jonah Goldberg, editor at large for National Review Online, wrote that "CBS should be ashamed for running those photos." Goldberg complained of a double standard in media coverage. "When shocking images might stir Americans to favor war, the Serious Journalists show great restraint. When those images have the opposite effect, the Ted Koppels let it fly," he wrote.

I could go on and on. When weapons caches were left unprotected, did the right express its outrage on behalf to the Iraqi people? What about the concern for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, wounded, or missing as a result of this misguided war? If the Limbaughs, O'Reillys and Malkins of the world were truly concerned about the Iraqi people, they would not complain that the massacre of Haditha, for example, were being over-reported, but instead would welcome every bit of news that shed light on this hideous crime.

The truth is, the right trots out its concern for the Iraqi people whenever it is politically convenient, whenever it needs to defend the President and the judgement of those who signed on for this war at the very beginning and cheered wildly when Bush landed on that Mission Accomplished aircraft carrier. Concern for the Iraqi people, if sincere, would translate into a real accounting for who did get ahold of this tiger that many on the right insist we can't let go of.

The question Jake Tapper asked can be answered with another question: Will a U. S. presence in Iraq end the violence? The clear answer at this point is no, despite frequent and periodic assurances to the contrary by the President and the military leaders who take orders from him.

But can we please stop pretending that the right wing apologists for this war have any great concern for the Iraqi people?

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Mike Pence: Stay in Iraq Forever

Mike Pence was on Bill Cunningham's show today. The link takes you to the interview. The first order of business was to trash the Fairness Doctrine. WLW is crapping their pants at the prospect of having to have a liberal host on their station to balance all of the right wing blowhards like Cunningham. Pence has written a bill to prevent the FCC from brining back the Fairness Doctrine. According to these guys, it's impossible to talk politics on the radio while presenting a balanced viewpoint.

Seriously, that's their argument. That the Fairness Doctine will kill talk radio and prevent people from talking politics because it's so hard to prove you've presented both sides of an issue.

Pence and Norm Coleman are working on a bill called, in true GOP form, the "Broadcaster Freedom Act." According to Pence, it would prevent the FCC from imposing the Fairness Doctrine without an act of Congress. It's hilarious to listen to these guys define what counts for "liberal viewpoints" in American media. Brian Williams and Katie Couric? Are you kidding me?

Then these two fine gentleman moved on to Iraq. You may remember that Pence was rightly ridiculed for comparing the Baghdad market to a farmer's market in Indiana. I'll spare you the gory details, but Pence basically argues that we have to stay in Iraq indefinitely. Cunningham claims that he's no longer with the President... but goes on to say that we can't withdraw. Change tactics, but stay. Whatever that means.

The line never changes with these guys. But it's significant when Cunningham says the President has lost him. If Cunningham is not on board, Bush has really lost it.

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Iraq: Life Imitates Art

Think Progress and Atrios both noted the awful story in the International Herald Tribune about the "most wounded soldier." He is concious and alert, but unable to communicate. Prisoner in his own body.

Sadly the Iraq war is now playing out in real life some of the most awful war scenes ever imagined. This particular story bears a striking and disturbing resemblance to the great war novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. This also happens to be one of the books available on Google Books; here it is. It tells the story of a horribly wounded soldier who has lost his limbs, his sight and his hearing, and is completely unable to communicate, but is concious and suffering, and aware of the coming and going of nurses and doctors in his room and aware of their touch.

Incredibly, this book was written in 1938. It gained new currency with the Vietnam generation, and sadly, seems relevant again today.

More about the novel here.

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