Jaded Sage:

Good news continues to flow from Iraq. The sweep through the last urban stronghold of Al Qaida in the country is almost finished as is the terrorist organization there. In the latest report, Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is  little more than a few armed bands hiding in rural areas. Their attacks are less frequent and have little impact. As temperatures in the region approached 106 degrees the war against the Sunni terrorist organization is cooling down. Last month the leader of AQI Abu Khalaf, a protégé of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed and the deterioration of the organization has followed.

The best news, however, is the fact there were no US combat deaths in Iraq this week. This is the first time that has occurred since the start of the war.

In the one issue Barrack Obama has failed to move on, Iraq, we are beginning to see a nuance of his campaign message to remove US troops as fast as possible. This is a welcome change. Iraq needs the time to initiate its reconstruction. McCain has an albatross of his own around his political neck. America doesn’t belong in Iraq for an extended occupation a la Germany or Japan following WW II. With Afghanistan deteriorating and the need to force the hand of Pakistan, we need to wrap up our stay in Iraq. As Obama nuances his stand on the Iraq War, McCain needs to do the same. But as we all know this election will not be about the Iraq War but it may be about what lies below the ground in Iraq, oil.

History is circuitous. Go back a hundred and ten years and you will find some eerie correlations with modern events.  Most who know their history will tell you the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor was the cause of the Spanish-American War. To a large extend it was the cause. But ask what caused the ship to explode and the the story gets muddier. The press certainly played a role in stoking the flames of war. William Randolph Hearst is believed to have wired the artist Frederick Remington in Cuba with the line, “You supply the pictures and I’ll supply the war.” Stories of Spanish atrocities there were popular in the “yellow press” of the day. The Cuban revolutionaries were seen in America as later day patriots.

When the US military used the destruction of the USS Maine as a causus belli against Spain, our cause seemed to be just. Not only were we shaking off the remnants of European tyranny in the Western Hemisphere but we were freeing an oppressed people a few short miles from our shore. Cuba Libre! The Spanish were easily routed from the last vestiges of their empire and their colonies became American spoils. The global political climate, however, did not involve altruism for altruism’s sake. Manifest destiny seemed to no longer be bound by the limits of seas and oceans. The Cubans (along with the Filipinos) soon realized that one colonizer had been replaced by another. Though tucked neatly in the Cuban Constitution like a thorn on a rose bush, the Platte Amendment set the stage for a long US commitment in Cuba, one in which the Cubans played a secondary role in ruling their own nation. The results of such heavy handedness are still being felt. A Fidel Castro would never had risen in an independent and democratic Cuba.

In recent weeks we have seen similar vestiges of century old polices reemerge. The Iraqi President Nuri Al-Maliki is currently negotiating a new security policy with the US over America’s long term commitment in Iraq. The current policy, as outlined within the UN, expires at the end of this year and the Iraqis are balking at the idea of an extended US presence in Iraq in its current form. One of the key sticking points is the number of bases that would be allowed to field US troops. Malaki wishes to scale down that number. Another issue is the extra-legality of US and mercenary forces in Iraq. Currently the members of the American military and their support forces are not bound by Iraqi legal jurisdictions. The Iraqis want to see a change in this policy. At odds, also, is the number of US combat troops that will be allowed to remain in Iraq and the free will of their commanders to initiate combat operations without consent of the Iraqi authorities.

On one hand these negotiations are good things. It shows the Iraqis are beginning to exert their political will. On the other hand, the fact the Bush Administration is butting heads with them over these issues leads one to wonder what intentions does the US have for Iraq and what was the real reason why we invaded. There used to be the mantra, “When they stand up, we will stand down.” If the Iraqis are calling for the draw down of US bases and forces, isn’t that what we have hoped for all along? The birth of the new Iraq was so tumultuous. Let’s not botch the end game as well and leave the nation bitter like Cuba in the wake of the Spanish-American War. A strong political will by the Maliki government is a gift and it is time the Bush Administration accepts it.

As the Democratic race nears its end and the economy takes its rightful place on the front burner of the 2008 Presidential campaign the sights and sounds of Iraq have largely faded from public view. It is a shame because we are seeing dramatic events unfolding there. Violence in that war torn land is way down and Patraeus’ counterintelligence (COIN) strategy which began with the surge in late 2007 is bearing fruit. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) exists only in small pockets and even those elements are finding life extremely difficult these days. For the most part AQI has overplayed their hand by murdering Iraqis in an effort to use fear to foment their grip on the nation. They are seen as enemies of the state by both Sunnis and Shias within Iraq.

The huge debacle perpetrated by L. Paul Bremmer at the onset of the occupation, the disbanding of the Iraq military, has largely been reversed and we are seeing more and more Iraqi forces (IA) take the lead in securing areas of Iraq once the domain of either AQI (who have been forced out) or sectarian militias (who have been forced to either lay down their arms or melt away). The most dramatic example of the IA playing a singular role is in Basra, a city near both the Iranian border and along the Persian Gulf. Basra was "seized" by IA troops two months ago and has since secured the city.  At the onset of the war Basra had been "occupied" by British forces but they recently left Iraq. Even when the British troops resided in the city, their hands off approach allowed for the city to devolve into power struggles between a multitude of Shiite militias, all vying to see who could be the most Islamic. As a result the region turned into a Taliban style, culturally restrictive enclave. All of this turmoil occurred in Iraqis most oil rich sector.

The progress in Basra comes on the heals of significant improvements first in Sunni dominated Al-Anbar Province and then in Baghdad. Sadr City, a lower class Shia neighborhood has been cleared of active militias by both US forces and IA. 

The best news of all is that Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki has vast public support. The true test of this will occur in 2009 as Iraq is set to hold general elections next year.

There is no doubt Iraq has a long way to go, especially in terms of repairing its infrastructure but the signs are promising. As I have said all along, failure in Iraq would be horrible for the Iraqis and send an abysmal message to those in the region. Patreaus continues to prove his mettle. If the casualty rates continue to decline, the Iraq War will indeed no longer be a significant campaign issue. For all Americans and Iraqis, this could be the best possible result.

Details of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book are coming out and by all indications it offers a scathing recollection of his days in the White House.

His revelations about why Bush went to war in Iraq are especially telling:

In Iraq, McClellan added, Bush saw "his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness, "something McClellan said Bush has said he believes is only available to wartime presidents.

The president’s real motivation for the war, he said, was to transform the Middle East to ensure an enduring peace in the region. But the White House effort to sell the war as necessary due to the stated threat posed by Saddam Hussein was needed because "Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitions purpose of transforming the Middle East," McClellan wrote.

 AJC.com

On Bush’s leadership skills he writes:

"It strikes me today as an indication of his lack of inquisitiveness and his detrimental resistance to reflection, something his advisers needed to compensate for better than they did."

Bush misled U.S. on Iraq, former aide says in new book

Scott McClellan’s ‘What Happened’ delivers tough criticism of president, advisers

By KEN HERMAN
Cox News Service
Published on: 05/27/08

WASHINGTON — In a book due out Monday, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan offers a blistering review of the administration and concludes that his longtime boss misled the nation into an unnecessary war in Iraq.

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Thomas Friedman has returned from sabbatical to enlighten us on the current issues of our times. Today he speaks about the US’ failures. He also gives a nod to Obama. I’m starting to believe Obama is the anti-Bush, and the anti-Bush is just fine by me.

Who Will Tell the People?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I’ve had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.

They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.

Our president’s latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after 9/11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”

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The fact that Obama traveled the world as a young man may not certify him as a presidential candidate but allows him to analyze the conditions of the globe in ways Bush was never capable of doing.

A Man at Home in the World

NEWSWEEK

He was just a college kid, vagabonding around the world. But Barack Obama says the weeks he spent traveling through Pakistan in 1981 shaped the views that he still holds today—and that he would bring into the White House. Obama remembers most vividly the desperation and hopelessness—"essentially a feudal life"—he witnessed in the countryside surrounding Karachi, a city that is today a hotbed of jihadist activity. At the tender age of 20, Obama suggested, he was already beginning to understand more about what ailed Muslim societies—what generated terrorism and fratricidal conflicts—than George W. Bush or John McCain do today. "Both as a consequence of living in Indonesia and traveling in Pakistan, having friends in college who were Muslim, I was very clear about the history of Shia-Sunni antagonism"—which is one reason why, as an Illinois state senator 21 years later, he opposed the war in Iraq, Obama told NEWSWEEK last week. "This notion that somehow we were going to be able to create a functioning democracy and reconcile century-old conflicts, I always thought was a bunch of happy talk from this administration."

Obama’s taken a lot of hits over his alleged foreign-policy inexperience—most notoriously from fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, who suggested in a TV ad last month that he was the wrong man to answer the phone at 3 a.m. during a crisis. But last week Obama signaled that he’d had enough of these attacks. Not only did he not lack experience, Obama cockily told a fund-raising crowd in San Francisco, but "foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

If Obama wins the nomination and faces McCain, this will be a critical test of his candidacy: can he change the terms of the debate so that the traditional measures of foreign-policy experience don’t apply? Because the kind of experience he talks about so confidently is not what one typically associates with a presidential résumé. It’s not Ike leading the Allied Armies into Europe; it’s not JFK saving his shipmates aboard PT-109; it’s not George H.W. Bush running the CIA and serving as veep for eight years. (Or, for that matter, John McCain flying combat missions and getting shot down in Vietnam.) Nor was Obama alluding to his mastery of the Moscow Treaty on nukes or the subtleties of Mideast peace talks—though many of his Senate colleagues are impressed with his growing expertise in those areas.

Instead, it is the kind of bottom-up experience that comes from growing up in the muddy lanes of Jakarta, in a plain concrete house at No. 16 Haji Ramli Street. There Obama played hide-and-seek in the local mosque, dueled with bamboo sticks and learned dirty words in Indonesian. Friends and teachers recall his being picked on for his height and dark skin, but say that even amid an alien culture he was a leader and a peacemaker in the schoolyard. He always wanted the job of organizing the other kids into a line before class, says Fermina Katarina Sinaga Suhanda, his third-grade teacher, who had to urge him to take turns. "He always wants to be No. 1, to be at the front. Psychologically, he wants to be in charge," she says.

It’s a long way from homeroom monitor to commander in chief, of course. But it was in Jakarta that Obama came to appreciate both the powerlessness of his native companions and the status that came from having a white American mother, Ann, who worked for the U.S. Embassy. "He was at an age when you first begin to see what’s going on," says Ben Rhodes, one of his speechwriters. "And what he saw was that America had something other people wanted. Here he is in a majority Muslim country, in a poor neighborhood. And … he has this tie to America that affords him an immediate opportunity that no one else has." Both Obama’s Kenyan father—who abandoned the family—and his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, were eager to penetrate that Western world. They never fully succeeded, and Obama knew it.

That experience, aides say, turned Obama into both someone who identifies with those less fortunate abroad—and a true-blue patriot. "He understands he’s gotten where he is based on the fact that we have a system that opens up opportunity to smart and talented people," says retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, a top Obama adviser. McPeak, Rhodes and others claim that Obama’s upbringing gives him deeper insight into how to win the "hearts and minds" so crucial to success in Iraq, and in the global struggle against Islamic extremism. "Obama’s experience living abroad gives him a sense of that grass-roots life, which is so important in shaping why a terrorist is a terrorist," says Tony Lake, Bill Clinton’s former national-security adviser, who now is a top Obama adviser.

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I like to compare the American involvement in Iraq to Thomas Jefferson’s take on slavery. The third president of the United States said of slavery:

“But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. “

As I listen to General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testify on the Hill these past two days I can’t help but shake my head at the complexity of the war. Beyond the presidential candidate’s questions that are posed to frame their stances in regard to the Iraq War there are the responses by the witnesses that reveal just how much the dynamics of the war can change. They change in ways that depict improvement in challenges that existed months prior (such as Al-Qaeda in Iraq) but  new tentacles grow out of the beast that pose significant new dangers (i.e. Shia conflict in Baghdad and in the south) that result in the inability of our military to make significant draw downs. In many ways Iraq has become the money pit. You might recall that awful Tom Hanks movie. As the nation’s economy wades into recession we find ourselves with an albatross. If you listen to the testimony on Capital Hill you will get the feeling despite the surge, there really isn’t much changing in Iraq. The country is so dysfunctional that when one ill seems to be resolved, another ailment pops up. Perhaps unlike the outcome of letting go of Jefferson’s wolf, the Iraq wolf is more apt to bite itself than the American’s that are holding it. As Petraeus was grilled repeatedly on the question of when will US troops be able to leave, he really must answer when is the right time to let go of the wolf’s ears?

The above was a quote by retired General Barry McCaffrey when asked about the future of Iraq. In the Fall I had the honor to attend a lecture in Kansas City initiated by the War College in Fort Leavenworth. The headliner for the event was General McCaffrey and it is was extremely informative. This week the General along with three other experts gave their assessments of the impact of the surge in Iraq and their idea where Iraq is heading in the immediate future. Their witness testimony was given before the Senate and provided the best insight into the war. Their bias-free view was refreshing. If you have three hours to kill I encourage you as a voting American to listen to their testimony. I believe everyone has this obligation. It is beyond the breadth of the bullet point driven media and free of political propaganda. To listen in it’s entirety click on the link at the end of the entry.

Gen. McCaffrey spoke first and gave his assessment. He led by saying the surge changed the nature of the struggle in Iraq. McCaffrey believes (and I strongly agree) the current commander in the Iraq theater (General David Patraeus) is the best military leader the US has had in 40 years. The other positive is the makeup of the Iraqi police is changing from thugs who had sectarian affiliations to a more professional force. McCaffrey, however, has much more to criticize than he does to praise. The Maliki government is completely dysfunctional and does not hold authority over any sector within Iraq, and that includes Baghdad. In other words the Maliki government is in fact totally useless. Corruption is breathtaking within the government and has added to the ineffectiveness. There is no doubt that a lot of the money being wasted is American tax dollars. In the meantime Iran is arming, funding and training the various Shia militias including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, et al. With our current troop strength, the US military can easily put down a Shia uprising but as we withdrawal, and we will withdrawal (as McCaffrey points out) not because of political reasons but because our military is overextended to the limit.

The US officers in the field are the defacto government in Iraq. Since the central government is absent in providing services, it is these officers that go around Iraq with hand fulls of dollars getting things done at the local level. McCaffrey stresses the US military is starting to unravel. The fourteen month rotations and the fact that some units are on their third and fourth tour is starting to grind them down. The weapon systems, including both air and sea assets, are deteriorating and in some cases becoming obsolete. Contractors in Iraq, both US and foreign have begun to play the roles traditionally done by regular service members in the past. Without these contractors the war would grind to a halt.

The situation that erupted in Basra over the past week underscores the obstacle for Iraq. Not only do they have to overcome a Sunni-Shia rift that has not even begun to be dealt with, never mind beginning to be healed but there is severe tensions within the Shia family which played out in south Iraq. With no effective government the only hope for Iraq is for the elections that will occur in the Fall to change the dynamic of government just like the surge did for the military component. But the US is almost done being the baby sitter. Soon Iraq will have to stand or fall on their own merits and this may depend almost as much on their neighbors as it does from within.

Senate Foreign Relations Cmte. Hearing on the U.S. Troop Buildup

The war in Iraq has taken a new twist in recent days. Fighting has flared in Baghdad and Southern Iraq between the Iraqi government, backed by the US, and principally rogue elements of Moqtada Al-Sadr’s militia, known as the Mahdi Army in an attempt to tamp down growing tensions between the south’s Shia factions. This rift, occurring between the Mahdi Army and their Shia rival, the Badr Brigade, is quite troubling. Since the power vacuum was created following the ousting of Saddam Hussein, Shiite factions have been vying for supremacy in Iraq. The wild card, of course, is the role of Iran. Their influence in the struggle has been immense and they are sure to play a significant part in the current conflagration.  The current tensions have arisen over the rich oil reserves in southern Iraq and principally in Basra, Iraq’s third largest city and chief port on the Persian Gulf.  For the time being Al-Sadr continues to uphold his cease fire despite mounting casualties. If he elects to end the cease fire you will begin to see large scale fighting break out in the south, ending years of relative calm. To put the current crisis in perspective I have included a recent report from Al-Jazeera-English:

Thousands in Baghdad Protest Basra Assault

Al Sadr in Trouble, Iraq Headed for Meltdown

Moqtada’s Bitter Cup

It is fascinating how the Bush Administration is incapable of winning an argument these days. In fact, it appears they have given up even trying. Like the waning hours of the Titanic when the crew understood bailing out the water was hopeless, the Bushies have deemed any struggle to state their case is not worth the effort. Take, for instance, the latest report compiled by the Defense Department that used 600,000 documents captured from Saddam after he was deposed. The document suggests there was no link between the Iraqi dictator and Al-Qaeda. But in a recent article written by the right wing apologist, William Kristol, he points out the document does elude to possible connections. Kristol states those inside the administration are mum on the assertion there are no terror links because  the case is “too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, (the administration) will say.”  Kristol goes on to write, “Furthermore, once the first wave of coverage is bad, you can never catch up: You give the misleading stories more life and your opponents further chances to beat you up in the media.” If you read the government document it highlights how Saddam Hussein (SH) supported terrorist organizations throughout his reign but clearly states and I quote, “

…But the relationships between Iraq and the groups advocating radical pan-Islamic doctrines are much more complex. This study found no “smoking gun” (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.”

We know the various nations within the Middle East support terrorist groups but the question is, is it a causus belli (cause for war)? The reality is the Bush Administration doesn’t have the credibility to fight this fight. The political capital that Bush boasted about after being re-elected was a chimera. As a result of Bush’s almost five years of inequities, the nation is left fighting the war’s origins, its progress and its future.

The reason why the war in Iraq is so contentious goes beyond the cost in human life and treasure; it is unpopular because most people know the reason for going to war was built on falsehoods. Those who look even deeper into the war know that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was not really affiliated with the Bin-Laden crowd but instead were mostly comprised of those in Iraq who had the most to lose with the passing of the Ba’athist regime. Those who are currently causing mayhem in Mesopotamia are almost exclusively Iraqis. In a recent article in the Washington Post entitled Iraq’s Jihad Myths, Reuel Marc Gerecht writes:

“But according to the CIA and the U.S. military, we are now seeing at most only dozens of Arab Sunni holy warriors entering the country each month. Even at the height of the insurgency in 2006-07, the figure might have been just a few hundred (and may have been much smaller).”

Now as the war moves into a new stage, a post-surge stage, Americans are confounded by not only the falsehoods that got us involved in the war but also the changing dimensions of what victory and defeat mean. As one Democratic candidate states he will begin withdrawal upon taking office, and the Republican candidate is willing to stay committed for a hundred years, the commanding general in Iraq has recently said the Iraqi government is failing to live up to their part of the bargain due to the divisions that have made the progress so difficult. John McCain seems to win the debate if we talk about the Iraq War in the present and Barack Obama seems to win if we talk about the Iraq War in the past but it is the future in Iraq that is so troublesome as has always been the case there. In each step along the way, that which appears to be the condition in Iraq has rarely been accurate and when something definitive occurs in Iraq it doesn’t stay defined for very long; it changes like the a sandy landscape. The more articles that appear from both the right and the left, the more anyone can be right about Iraq at any given time because the conditions in this war torn region are never fixed. In this way William Kristol can claim there were Al_Qaeda links to SH’s government even though the Defense Department clearly state’s there was no “smoking gun”. This type of thinking got us involved in the war and those on the right obviously still cling to this phantom rationale.