Reaping The Whirlwind

In the published text of President Bush's speech tonight, he states "After September 11, I made a commitment to the American people: This Nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will take the fight to the enemy. We will defend our freedom."

Most of the country and the world fully backed the President in this effort. Unfortunately, the President soon veered away from the task at hand. Instead of capturing Osama bin Laden and making every effort to protect the USA against terrorist attacks, the President set off on a misguided war in Iraq. Worse, the Bush administration deceived the country to sell the war. Now, however, the informed public knows that there was never a link between Saddam and Al Quaeda and there were no WMDs posing an imminent threat.

Furthermore, the public now knows that the Bush Administration may have planned the attack on Iraq but they failed to plan the peace. Now our occupation only serves to enflame the insurgency. So in Iraq, are we helping or hurting? I fear we are reaping the whirlwind.

Squandered Victory

Laura Rosen over at War and Piece links to the NY Times review of Larry Diamond's "Sqandered Victory." It is not a pretty picture.

"The failures of the Bush administration to prepare adequately for the postwar period in Iraq are by now well known, underscored by the revelation this week that a briefing paper, prepared for Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain eight months before the invasion, warned that 'a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise' and that 'little thought' had been given by the United States to 'the aftermath and how to shape it.'It is a subject explicated in chilling - and often scathing - detail by 'Squandered Victory,' a new book by Larry Diamond, a former senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and a leading American scholar on democracy and democratic movements. In this book, Mr. Diamond contends that the postwar troubles in Iraq - a bloody and unrelenting insurgency, the creation of a new breeding ground for terrorists and metastasizing ethnic and religious tensions - are the result of 'gross negligence' on the part of a Bush administration that rushed to war. He asserts that 'mistakes were made at virtually every turn' of the occupation, and that 'every mistake the United States made in Iraq narrowed the scope and lengthened the odds for progress.'

His book not only provides an unsettling account of the mind-boggling challenges involved in trying to bring democracy to Iraq (ranging from practical matters like setting up an infrastructure for the electoral process to political and philosophical issues dealing with the drafting of a constitution) but also lays out a thoughtful, pull-no-punches analysis of the missteps and misjudgments by the Bush White House and the Pentagon in the months before and after America's toppling of Saddam Hussein.

It is a book that should be read by anyone interested in understanding why the United States' quick military victory has given way to an increasingly virulent insurgency and nearly daily reports of car bombings and suicide attacks, why even post-election hopes have been shadowed by worries about the continuing violence spiraling into a Lebanon-style civil war. . ."

About a year ago in a post at this site called Arrogance and Ignorance I wrote about James Fallows' "The 51st State" posted on the Atlantic Monthly site in November of 2002. This article used to be available in its entirely without a subscription but no more. Nevertheless, Fallows proved far more thoughtful and prescient than the Bush administration.

The OTHER "Memos"

BlondeSense has posted a copy of an email from the BBC's Greg Palast to Chairman Conyers. In it Palast sets out a timeline for the Bush Administrations secret plan to go to war in Iraq for the benefit of corporations and Big Oil.

"February 2001 - Only one month after the first Bush-Cheney inauguration, the State Department's Pam Quanrud organizes a secret confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam. US oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator.

On BBC Television's Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained,

'It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime.'

March 2001 - Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil company executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq. Cheney refuses to release the names of those attending or their purpose. Harper's has since learned their plan and purpose -- see below."

Read it all and check out Greg Palast's site.

The Scourge of Militarism

Back in September 2003, Chalmers Johnson wrote this column: which now reappears in Mother Jones News.

"The collapse of the Roman republic in 27 BC has significance today for the United States, which took many of its key political principles from its ancient predecessor. Separation of powers, checks and balances, government in accordance with constitutional law, a toleration of slavery, fixed terms in office, all these ideas were influenced by Roman precedents. John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams often read the great Roman political philosopher Cicero and spoke of him as an inspiration to them. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, authors of the Federalist Papers, writing in favor of ratification of the Constitution signed their articles with the name Publius Valerius Publicola, the first consul of the Roman republic.

The Roman republic, however, failed to adjust to the unintended consequences of its imperialism, leading to a drastic alteration in its form of government. The militarism that inescapably accompanied Rome's imperial projects slowly undermined its constitution as well as the very considerable political and human rights its citizens enjoyed. The American republic, of course, has not yet collapsed; it is just under considerable strain as the imperial presidency -- and its supporting military legions -- undermine Congress and the courts. However, the Roman outcome -- turning over power to an autocracy backed by military force and welcomed by ordinary citizens because it seemed to bring stability -- suggests what might happen in the years after Bush and his neoconservatives are thrown out of office."

So How Are We Doing?

Here is Newsweek's assessment of the situation in Iraq. "The most powerful army in human history can't even protect a two-mile stretch of road. The Airport Highway connects both the international airport and Baghdad's main American military base, Camp Victory, to the city center. At night U.S. troops secure the road for the use of dignitaries; they close it to traffic and shoot at any unauthorized vehicles. More troops and more helicopters could help make the whole country safer. Instead the Pentagon has been drawing down the number of helicopters. And America never deployed nearly enough soldiers. They couldn't stop the orgy of looting that followed Saddam's fall. Now their primary mission is self-defense at any cost—which only deepens Iraqis' resentment.

The four-square-mile Green Zone, the one place in Baghdad where foreigners are reasonably safe, could be a showcase of American values and abilities. Instead the American enclave is a trash-strewn wasteland of Mad Max-style fortifications. The traffic lights don't work because no one has bothered to fix them. The garbage rarely gets collected. Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone's checkpoints. They've repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers—to Americans and Iraqis alike. Not that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have much to smile about. They're overworked, much ignored on the home front and widely despised in Iraq, with little to look forward to but the distant end of their tours—and in most cases, another tour soon to follow. Many are reservists who, when they get home, often face the wreckage of careers and family."

Against Discouragement

Read Howard Zinn's commencement address delivered at Spelman College this year: Against Discouragement. "My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself -- whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist -- you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.

Recently I saw a photo on the front page of the New York Times which I cannot get out of my mind. It showed ordinary Americans sitting on chairs on the southern border of Arizona, facing Mexico. They were holding guns and they were looking for Mexicans who might be trying to cross the border into the United States. This was horrifying to me -- the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call 'civilization,' we have carved up what we claim is one world into two hundred artificially created entities we call 'nations' and are ready to kill anyone who crosses a boundary."