Great essay by Dan Drezner at Foreign Policy, pushing back against pro-W encomiums recently appearing as George W Bush Library opening looms.
Money quote:
At best, George W. Bush was a well-meaning man who gave the occasional nice speech and was thoroughly overmatched by events. At worst, he was the most disastrous foreign policy president of the post-1945 era.
At History News Network, University of North Carolina history prof emeritus Michael H. Hunt points out that some very important viewpoints have gone missing in the collective examination of conscience and search for "lessons" ten years after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq: those of professional historians who actually know something about the Middle East. (In the vein of shameless self-promotion, and to point out that at least some reporters and editors "get it," I offer this piece in the Saginaw News, for which I and another historian - from Saginaw Valley State University - were interviewed. They even included our PR pix!) Hunt's essay bears extensive quoting:
Talk about a gap between serious academic history and the policy community. The New York Times, which has made a big deal of the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, offers a stunning case in point. At least five different items in the paper for Wednesday, March 20, seek some perspective from “authorities” heavy tilted toward policy specialists and former Bush administration officials. There is nary a historian of any sort to be seen.
The paper’s editorial on the anniversary advances several startling propositions suggested by the U.S. experience in Iraq. These include getting our intelligence right, approaching decisions for war with an open mind. and understanding our regional influence is limited. Of course, nothing about how the press should guard against get rolled by the White House in the run up to war!
One of the David Petraeus acolytes, John Nagl, offers an op-ed that adds an additional deep insight: war holds surprises so military leaders need to be flexible. Unfortunately nothing more profound can be expected from a counter-insurgency camp whose use of history over the years has been at best tendentious.
David Sanger’s report on the lack of consensus on lessons learned features extensive quotes from ex-Bush officials offering predictable justifications. Sanger clearly has no historians in his Rolodex so what he reports comes from the echo chamber that is the policy world.
Five experts jump into a debate over whether removing Saddam Hussein was a good idea. No card-carrying historians of Iraq, the Middle East, or U.S. foreign policy in this mix.
Perhaps the most revealing piece is Peter Baker’s treatment of Washington’s relative silence on the anniversary. He notes that the capital, like the country more generally, “seems happy to wash its hands of Iraq.” The real lesson learned, his piece suggests, is to forget wars that don’t go well. Just celebrate the ones you win. Forgetting may already be a sturdy feature of the American way of war. Silence followed the aftermath of the conquest of the Philippines, the frustrating war in Korea, and the Vietnam War (at least for a decade).
Anyone in the lesson business who wants to ignore history does so at their own peril. As any historian worth their salt will tell you, assessing a war just ten years gone is very difficult. Not enough time has passed for dispassionate perspective; partisanship and wishful thinking are still strong (a point that Times inadvertently drives home). Moreover, the evidence on which any compelling judgment depends is thin; it will take years for the historical record to become full enough to tell us with confidence who did what to whom and why.
But along with these cautions historians would make an additional point. The past is always helpful in setting context, and it is indispensable in cases so close to the present and so poorly documented as Iraq is. How did U.S. involvement in the region help set the stage for the Iraq imbroglio? Were there long-term forces or preoccupations in play that may have helped drive U.S. policymakers toward their decisions? What other wars offer parallels with Iraq that might be revealing? What long-term developments internationally and at home might have facilitated or obstructed the march to war?
Historians pursuing these kinds of questions can shed badly needed light on important issues otherwise for the moment necessarily obscure. Perhaps here’s the issue the Times staff might have explored: how can history serve as a resource to help us understand Iraq and our role in the world more generally?
Hunt's essay also reminds me that, before the invasion, the US State Department actually assembled a sizeable team of scholars and experts for what it called the "Future of Iraq Project." (The team included Prof. McGuire Gibson of the University of Chicago, an eminent archaeologist/anthropologist who is one of the planet's premier experts on ancient Iraq and its antiquities; he's also an acquaintance of mine.) They assembled a voluminous report, 13 volumes in fact, with many well-informed recommendations, only to see it shelved and ignored by the Bush administration.
Would that the New York Times and other newspapers "of note" had contacted and consulted some of the team members for their retrospective ten years after. Would that Boy George and his entourage had bothered to consult them ten years ago. Instead, neocon worthies like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and PW's former Dept of Defense deputy Douglas Feith continue to get interviews. In Perle's case, on NPR, where in response to a question about whether the invasion - which he cheerleaded - has been the right thing to do, he replied, in effect, "Don't even ask" (as in, "stupid question!"). Douglas Feith - to whom General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion, once referred as the "dumbest fucking guy on the planet") , went on to a faculty position at Georgetown, evidently because his expertise was deemed invaluable to foreign-service servants of the future. (Shame on Georgetown for that one.)
So, it's left to us historians to try to pick up and reassemble the pieces for our students - some of whom are Iraq war vets, some of whom were hardly out of diapers when Bush had his "Mission Accomplished" moment and, if asked what Abu Ghraib was, might be as likely to answer "a Disney pixar-flick character"?
Meanwhile, as Peter Baker's recent NYT piece noted, Mr Obama had virtually no comment on the Iraq invasion 10 years after.
And the beat goes on.
Amidst the veritable cornucopia of ten-years-after Iraq invasion retrospectives, Thomas Friedman of course has to weigh in. In contrast to the "suck on this" tough-guyism that characterized his pre-war cheerleading, he's become more sweetness and light, especially as he warbles about the Iraqi university students who, in his take (based on his reading of a Financial Times piece by the much more sensible Roula Khalaf), care not about Sunni vs Shi'a. Indeed, that's a sign that we may indeed hope for a brighter future for Iraqis.
But when TF writes of America's having contributed to that bright future by helping the Iraqis write a democratic constitution . . . well, that's a stretch. I can't begin to count the number of observers who have made the point: that constitution, the writing of which was guided so much by US hands, essentially cemented in place a sectarian quota-bound parliamentary system - and division - that has kept Iraqis from building the "Iraqiness" that they so need if the country is to prosper, even survive as a unitary state.
I suspect that until the day he dies, Thomas Friedman will try to find ways to look back on his vile cheerleading of 2002 and 2003 and feel able to say, "there, there, I wasn't so bad. It all worked out - and I helped make it happen."
Good luck with that, TF. Don't hold your breath.
People have been debating for years the possible parallels between the decline of the Roman empire and the signs of US "imperial" decline. Huffington Post publishes Barton Kunstler's musings on this theme. One of the six parallels he highlights especially caught my attention:
4. Spread of escapist cults. Christianity was only the most successful example of the "exotic" cults that offered Romans solace when their own society, and thus its prevailing religion, began to fail them. Today, the U.S. is held hostage by those for whom carrying any weapon, anywhere, is a sanctified religious belief. We have members of Congress who don't believe in evolution, who are as literalist and intolerant about their religion as any ignorant 10th century rural priest. The entire globe suffers from the ravages of extreme, often violent, fundamentalism. Fundamentalist thought relies on pre-processed sound-bites that obstruct any considered address of real-world problems. It makes negotiation impossible. Part of the paralysis of our national government lies in the fanatical religiosity that many of our representatives bring to the political process.
. . . or, at least, can't we zipper his mouth? Or at the very least, issue a restraining order that proscribes any contact whatsoever between him and Jennifer Rubin, or similar Israel propagandists?
Matt Duss's piece today makes it plain that this guy won't be satisfied until the US bombs the bejeezus out of Iran. Duss makes another excellent point: Congress may soon be collectively foaming at the mouth over an extremely poorly conceived resolution that the US support Israel even if Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against Iran. If they're thinking that acting deranged will impel Iran's leaders into submission, they may be sorely mistaken.
At The New Yorker, Steve Coll makes the point that "al-Qaeda" has become strictly "yesterday." Money quote:
This March marks ten years since the United States led an invasion of Iraq based on bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. That dark anniversary offers a reminder, if one is required, that in any conflict where a President claims war powers the Chief Executive’s analytical precision in describing the enemy is a grave responsibility. A franchise is a business that typically operates under strict rules laid down by a parent corporation; to apply that label to Al Qaeda’s derivative groups today is false. If Al Qaeda is not coherent enough to justify a formal state of war, the war should end; if the Administration wishes to argue that some derivative groups justify emergency measures, it should identify that enemy accurately.
Jihadist violence presents an enduring danger. Its proponents will rise and ebb; the amorphous threats that they pose will require adaptive security policies and, occasionally, military action. Yet the empirical case for a worldwide state of war against a corporeal thing called Al Qaeda looks increasingly threadbare. A war against a name is a war in name only.
Earlier in the piece, Coll points out that with the Obama administration's hammering on what has become a perpetual (and self-perpetuating) state of war with "al-Qaeda," the late medieval Hundred Years War may come to seem like child's play. Yet as long as Obama and his successors can dangle before a largely ignorant and easily inflamed American public a Medusa-faced al-Qaeda, we as a nation will never be able to move completely on from the events of 11 September 2001. More significantly, we may never be able to move off the path down which we have been headed these last years. That path ends with the US as global proconsul enforcing its will through an over-glorified military elite complemented by off-the-radar special forces inflicting instant - and sometimes unjustifiable - destruction from the skies.
For weeks, people like Elliot Abrams, Richard Cohen, John McCain, Lindsey Graham - the list is long and, in a manner of speaking, distinguished - have been hammering Mr. Obama for his failure to bring the US "into the fight" in Syria. We are warned repeatedly that "the rebels" are storing up resentment against the US for its refusal to supply them with heavier weapons to use against Asad's forces. Meanwhile,wiser and cooler heads - among them, Marc Lynch at FP - have praised Obama for limiting the US's involvement in Syria. For the most part, Israel has been depicted in this imbroglio as essentially a concerned and ambivalent onlooker - no fan of Bashar al-Asad (whose Syria for years has styled itself the spearhead of resistance to Israeli domination of the Middle East), yet wary of what Asad's demise might bring in its wake.
At least two recent articles, however, make plain another dimension of this situation. Both Sheera Frenkel (for McClatchy) and Barbara Slavin (for IPS, posted also at New Atlanticist) report on how Israel is keeping careful watch over arms being shipped to the anti-Asad forces and is working to dissuade the Obama administration from changing its policy and sending advanced weaponry to the rebels.
Why? Obviously, the Israelis are concerned that Asad's eventual ouster will lead to a new government likely dominated by Sunni Islamists whose military deterrent will comprise the various militias - some of them, like Jabhat al-Nusra, motivated by jihadism - now leading the rebellion. The better-armed they become, the greater threat they will pose to Israel in the months ahead.
But, second, dissuading the US from sending weapons to the rebels leaves Israel with a hand much freer to intervene in Syria in any fashon Israel sees fit. That could be with airstrikes or special forces, or even - as some have suggested - the creation of a "security zone" along its border with Syria, a la its security zone in southern Lebanon during the era of the Lebanon civil war. No US weapons to the rebels means no possibility of hard feelings with the US if the IDF takes military action that might blow up those American-supplied weapons.
Given these revelations, it will be interesting to see if the usual suspects begin to dampen down their demands that Obama send high-end weapons to Syria.
And for those who want the US to send in those weapons because of moral, humanitarian, R2P concerns for Syria's people, they ought not be surprised that Israel's interests supersede those concerns. The people of the West Bank could tell them all about that.
At the National Interest, Yousaf Butt makes an important point: In recent history, when countries have suffered economic hardship due to sanctions or other external pressure/factors, they have tended to elect hyper-nationalist leaders in response. Think Putin in Russia . . . and Adolf Hitler in Germany.
All of which goes to Butt's larger point: it's time for the US et al to make Iran a serious offer, with real compromises (dare we even say, concessions?) on its nuclear program and the current harsh sanctions. Iran is not going to fold; and Obama would be an idiot to launch a military strike that would only imperil the US's slow-motion economic recovery as well as threaten the global economy with a severe downturn.
It stands to reason, of course, that with sequestration looming and the issues of immigation reform and gun control demanding his attention - and with Bibi soon to pin a medal on his chest - Obama may be content to nudge the Iran can slowly down the road. But in doing so he may be making it even harder to reach a deal.
OK, I'm supposed to be hunkered down with revising my way-way-overdue book manuscript (a history of Mesopotamia/Iraq - you can already find it advertised on Amazon.com.uk) - so I can't take time to take this latest Thomas Friedman piece apart the way I'd really like to. But you'll find in it so much of what's wrong with Friedman's method and style as a commentator - and so much of why people who really have capacity for insight into Middle Eastern history and politics become so regularly infuriated both with him and with the underserved adulation he receives from so many quarters, including the White House.
His jumping-off point for telling us what India thinks about the mess in the Middle East is the opinion of one journalist, probably garnered over drinks at some high-end club. TF is not a streets-guy
He ascribes what's going on to deep, timeless histories that he vastly overgeneralizes, and to easy binary oppositions like Arab v Kurd and Sunni v Shia. No room for nuance or complexity - which is probably why so many in the general public buy his books. I mean, Gee, he makes things so easy to understand.
But then, at the end, in his inimitably cutesy fashion, he sorta throws up his hands and resorts to a cheap out: "It's the Middle East, Jake." For those of you not of a certain age, Friedman is stealing from the very last line in one of Jack Nicholson's early movies, "Chinatown." Nicholson's client and love interest (played by Faye Dunaway) has just been gruesomely shot in her car, on a busy street in Chinatown. Looking on is her father, played by John Huston, with whom she had had an incestuous relationship that produced a child, who's also looking on, screaming in horror while her father/grandfather tries to comfort her. Surreal, no? Nicholson's character (Jake) has just watched all this go down. He is confused, angry . . . whereupon the police captain, his former colleague, tells him, "Go home, Jake; it's Chinatown" - the insinuation being that Chinatown is where things wacky and inscrutable have always gone down. No way you can figure it out, Jake. Why even try?
Just like in Thomas Friedman's Middle East.
As Belen Fernandez demonstrates in her masterful take-down of Friedman as an "expert" in international affairs (full disclosure: I reviewed her book, quite favorably, here and here), there's no other region on the planet upon which Friedman has lavished more attention, and for which he claims more "expertise," than the Middle East. Yet, perhaps no other mainstream commentator has done more to relegate that region to the category of "Other" as far as the West is concerned.
By my lights, that hardly recommends him as an expert to whom Americans, or anyone else, ought to be turning for insight into the peoples of a region they so desperately need to understand.
Taking into account most reckonings and analysis I've seen, it seems pretty safe to bet that whether or not Syria remains a unitary state, there will be a long-term struggle for power between hard-core Sunni Islamists and other groups in this predominantly Sunni Muslim country who prefer a future political system (a) infused with, but not dominated by, principles enshrined in sharia and (b) incorporating elements of liberal-secular nationalism. Whatever one's take on Baathism specifically, the fact of the matter is that late 19th- and early 20th-century Syria was one of the hearths of secular Arab nationalism.
A report in today's NY Times limns the shape and dynamic of local political tensions that may dominate Syria's political life: hard-core jihadists (specifically, members of the Jabhat al-Nusrah) asserting their preference for strict adherence to what they view as properly Muslim conducr, versus local community members intent on determining the shape of local governance without jihadist interference. The report makes very clear the potential for violent confrontation.
Some of this puts me in mind of the situation in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Al-Qaeda-type jihadists entered Sunni areas and were able to dominate local communties because they were well equipped and well organized. But in enforcing their strict moral and legal codes they also resorted to such brutality that the locals turned against them, with many of the locals later joining the Sunni sahwa ("awakening") militias that played such a huge part in ousting al-Qaeda (at least temporarily) and dampening down the general level of violence. (That's the same dampening of violence that John McCain and his ilk insisted on crediting to the Petraeus "Surge" - which is the basis on which McCain speaks of Iraq as a US "victory.")
Of course, the Iraq situation was very different from that in Syria because the catalyst for so much of the violence there was the invasion and occupation by the US. To be sure, the Nusra jihadists and others are serving as proxies for the Saudis and other hyper-Sunni regional players. But my real point here is that as the writ of the Assad government in Damascus continues to shrink, and the rebel groups continue to be unable to come together to fashion a more centralized political solution, Syrian communities will be having to take matters into their own hands, on the micro-level. The potential for conflict is obvious.
And what kind of "Syria" emerges from all of this is anybody's guess
Among the more ominous reports from or about Syria today is one from the LA Times that middle-class, educated Syrians are becoming ambivalent about the anti-Assad rebels, especially given the increased evidence of jihadists among them.
Hassan Hassan in The National also comments at length on the jihadis' presence among the rebels. Although, he says, their presence is sometimes overhyped in the Western media, their ability to provide social services to people has enhanced their appeal. But perhaps his most foreboding comment comes at the end:
The bottom line is this: the longer this crisis goes on, the more time radical forces from all sides will have to dig in.
Meanwhile, reports the NYT, the main opposition group in exile, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, met Saturday but was unable to fashion a transitional government. The disconnect between this bunch and the rebels doing the actual fighting remains too broad.
Meanwhile, displacement and exile has rendered hundreds of thousands of Syrians miserable. Hungry, wet, cold, impoverished, children and the elderly at risk of death by illness or exposure. They have no prospects, can see absolutely no light on the horizon. Hence, frustration, anger.
That's a perfect breeding ground for people preaching extreme solutions. It's also lousy raw material with which to fashion a new political and social contract when the time for that comes.
