Tag: Iraq

Categories
national politics & policies

Endless Fog of Endless War

Yesterday, NBC’s Chuck Todd opened a “Meet the Press” segment by calling U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq “wars now without an end.”

“The U.S. now seems to be in a semi-​permanent state of war,” added Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel.

“Right now, we’re just in damage control,” explained Lt. General Dan Bolger, Retired, the author of Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. “Our enemies, the Taliban and ISIS, are talking about winning.”

Mr. Todd asked, “Why do we have this incredible military that can’t win these wars?”

“The military can give you a quick victory over a conventional army. It cannot deliver a rebuilt country in the place you go,” replied the general. “That takes an effort of the entire U.S. population and government. And moreover, it takes the commitment of the American people for the long term.”

And then Baghdad and Kabul will look a lot like Chicago or Boston?

“At what point do we walk away?” Todd wanted to know. Never?

“It becomes difficult to walk away, because these situations are spinning quite badly out of control,” offered Sarah Chayes, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “And it’s spreading.”

Our decade-​plus in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost us greatly and accomplished little good, if any.

Even a century of Americans fighting and occupying and pacifying these countries will not succeed. The cost, not just in billions of tax dollars, but also in thousands of our countrymen dead and maimed, is unacceptable.

It’s time to really end the “endless” wars.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies

Aeschylation

“In war,” the Greek dramatist Aeschylus told us, “truth is the first casualty.”

This came to mind when Secretary of State John Kerry testified in the Senate last week.

The new Iraq War has been pitched exhaustively to the American people as “only air strikes” and “absolutely no boots on the ground” — even as the Obama Administration continues to send additional U.S. military advisors to place their boots on Iraqi sand (and, at least once thus far, to engage ISIS directly via Apache attack helicopters hovering above Iraqi ground.)

Kerry again assured senators that the president “has been crystal clear that his policy is that U.S. military forces will not be deployed to conduct ground combat operations against ISIL.”

Strangely, however, the Secretary most adamantly urged Senators not to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would restrict President O from doing precisely what he has so often and emphatically pledged not to do: put combat boots on the ground in Iraq.

The fact that the Obama Administration has foreclosed any possibility of putting US troops on the ground to fight, according to Sec. Kerry, “doesn’t mean that we should preemptively bind the hands of the commander in chief or our commanders in the field in responding to scenarios and contingencies that are impossible to foresee.”

Impossible to foresee? Yeah, right. The “no boots” promise provides all the stability of leaves in the wind.

Having any trust in this administration is impossible to foresee.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

Foreign Policy Evacuation?

Last week, the United States closed and shuttered the embassy in Tripoli, Libya, evacuating from the country its personnel — 158 diplomats and 60 Marines. Fighting between two rival militias reportedly got so close that the embassy was actually being hit by stray small arms fire.

I certainly don’t object to the decision to pull people out. Seems prudent, especially in light of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans, including our ambassador, dead.

But the protective move sends an unmistakable signal about Libya and US foreign policy. Obama’s 2011 military intervention into Libya via NATO — famously promoted as “leading from behind” — has clearly and obviously failed.

Libya is in chaos, unsafe for Americans … or Libyans.

President Obama is hardly the sole leader deserving blame. Military campaigns launched by President Bush, who led from in front, haven’t worked, either.

After years of “pacifying” Iraq, at the cost of thousands of American lives, and building up Iraq’s military forces, the Iraqi army disintegrated at the first sign of conflict. The Iraqi government remains thoroughly corrupt.

Sadly, the same fate awaits the end of our nation-​building stint in Afghanistan. A recent Washington Post story quoted Sgt. Kenneth Ventrice, a veteran of three tours in Iraq and now serving his second in Afghanistan, saying, “It’s going to fall a lot faster than Iraq did.”

These foreign interventions are failures.

But the biggest failure? Not to learn from our mistakes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

All the Way

Iraq is a mess. Two presidents have informed us that the Iraq war is over and the mission accomplished. And yet the scions of Al-​Qaida are on the march, conquering the country city by city. The U.S. is said to be turning to … Iran for help.

In the ’80s, the United States government armed Iraq with weapons* to war on Iran, a country that had just undergone a revolution and humiliated the U.S. with the hostage crisis. Saddam Hussein was “our friend.”

Now, after the U.S. has executed this Hussein, and destroyed Iraq’s ruling leach class, the Sunni Ba’athist Party — after a jury-​rigged government and American-​trained army failed to withstand assaults from a core group of true-​blue-​jihadists in the form of ISIS — the old enemy Iran is being dubbed a savior.

My suspicion is that Iraq cannot and should not be “saved.” It was the construct of British imperialism and the mapmakers of the Versailles Treaty. It is easily divisible into of three countries because there are three distinct groups of people: Sunni populations, Shia populations, and Kurds to the north.

One Iraq or three nations?

Here’s the good news: This isn’t our choice to make.

Sure, the military might of the U.S. could “pacify” Iraq for a time, and arguably for the next 100 years — installing and uninstalling and always complaining about one Iraqi regime after another, providing an occupation force to quell disturbances — only to see the old feuds erupt anew once we leave.

Why do it? Why lose one life to such a mission?

Let Iraqi Shia, Sunni and Kurds do the fighting and dying … and the deciding.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Recently declassified documents also show U.S. complicity in helping Iraq to target its use of chemical weapons against Iran.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

War and Broccoli

The art of polling is similar to almost any effort where interpretation is required: Context is important.

The Reason-​Rupe pollsters seem to get this. Their recent survey covers not only a lot of ground (the president’s job performance, possible candidates in the upcoming elections, health care, morality and war) but goes into some depth on a number of the issues covered. For instance, each of Obama’s major challengers is put in the context of several competitive scenarios — Obama vs. Romney, Obama vs. Santorum (the poll was conducted before Santorum dropping out), Obama vs. Gingrich, Obama vs. Paul, etc.— with even possible third-​party runs brought in. All very interesting.

The biggest section of the poll concerned health care. These questions also probed alternatives, eliciting opinions explicitly in the context of possible options and outcomes. But the results regarding Iran’s nuclear capabilities were especially provocative. Nearly half of Americans tend to favor military action against the country were we to discover that the Iranian government was developing nuclear weaponry. But, when the conflict was considered as a long, dragged-​out affair — of the same variety as happened in Iraq — support dwindled, and the numbers opposed to intervention went well over half.

Not shocking. Costs matter. Context matters.

The most amusing element of context in the poll emerged in one pair of questions regarding Obamacare. Is the federal requirement to carry medical insurance unconstitutional? Over 60 percent said yes. But switch that mandate to requiring Americans to buy broccoli and other healthy foods, and those crying “unconstitutional” shot up to 87 percent.

Now that’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Taste Racism

Bigotry and intolerance come in many forms. And they come around again and again. A bizarre New York Times “news story” demonstrates this:

Baghdad has weathered invasion, occupation, sectarian warfare and suicide bombers. But now it faces a new scourge: tastelessness.

Ah, the last twist of the knife! After all the bloodshed and tyranny, Iraqis celebrate newness with color:

In downtown Baghdad, a police headquarters has been painted two shades of purple: lilac and grape. The central bank, a staid building in many countries, is coated in bright red candy cane stripes.

The reporters list many examples. 

Matt Welch, at Reason magazine’s Hit & Run, has choice words for this particular article: “obnoxious” and “contemptible” and “latent ‘taste racism.’”

Put me in Matt’s camp. Aesthetic intolerance like this is ugly.

Contrary to the New York Times, the so-​called color-​crazed Iraqi people have latched onto a good thing: Property rights. You see, says a quoted expert, their mentality is “that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it. But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome. It’s anarchy of taste.”

Oh, how shocking.

But is our tyranny of taste in towns and cities in the western world better? We have busybody City Councils and nasty neighbors telling you that you’ve painted your house the wrong shade of brown.

Freedom should be celebrated in many colors, including colors that annoy writers for the New York Times.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.