What a sincerely compassionate and caring man. That’s all I could think when I read President Bush’s remarks in Latin America this week, where he told our friends down South:

“I want to remind people throughout our neighborhood that America cares about them…And I want the American people to get credit for their generosity in Central and South America.”

There’s nothing that people around the world love more than our oh-so-popular President engaging in a small act of generosity and then congratulating himself and our country in front of a large international camera crew. I’m shocked the protestors across Latin America didn’t put down their sandwich boards and begin thanking Bush on the spot. How rude!

On a serious note, when is this administration going to learn that you don’t do good just to “get credit”? You do good because you actually care about the world and because you genuinely believe that we should be a good global neighbor. It’s only when you truly care about others (not just in self-interested terms) that they will care about you (not just in self-interested in terms). The irony is that people around the world really did care about America in the wake of 9-11 and increasingly Americans really care about the world (- look at everyone from our Hollywood celebs to our high-tech entrepreneurs devoting themselves to ending poverty and disease globally). In many ways, it is our President and his failed policies that are keeping America from getting credit for our good deeds because  he is so focused on getting recognized he’s forgotten to do anything worthy of recognition. Indeed, to most of the world, the President increasingly looks as if he cares a whole lot about American security and very little about global security. As it turns out, his leadership is jeopardizing both because in reality the two are mutually interdependent and not mutually exclusive.

Iraq and veterans care continued to be the topics de jour this weekend. Consider THIS WEEK on ABC: 

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: President Bush may be traveling through Latin America, but his focus is still on Iraq. He asked Congress yesterday to fund more than 4,000 new troops on top of the 21,500 he asked for in January. Democrats in Congress say it’s time to start bringing troops home. And we’re joined this morning by one of them, Senator James Webb of Virginia.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So is the president going to get this request?

WEBB: Well, you know, as long as he has the authority as commander-in-chief to conduct the war, he’s going to be able to control a lot of these sorts of things. I don’t think people are going to go against him in terms of cutting back the appropriations for more troops.   

So, Congress will pressure the White House to bring the troops home by giving it the funding it requests. Brilliant! Sen. Webb then clarified how a timetable is anything but. (more…)

Benazir Bhutto chairwoman of the Pakistan People’s Party and a former prime minister of Pakistan lives in exile in Dubai. Her important OP-ED is featured in the WP today. She makes a very important point re: US alliances with dictators such as Musharraf (I hope some of the 2008 candidates start discussing their policy positions on Pakistan):

“Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have, for decades, used religious parties for recruits. Political madrassas — religious schools that preach terrorism by perverting the faith of Islam — have spread by the tens of thousands.

The West has been shortsighted in dealing with Pakistan. When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation — namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf’s suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.”

Pakistan has nuclear weapons as well….we need a new policy – one that supports democracy.

Lt. Gen. William Odom spoke out against the Iraq war before it began. Since the invasion, he has consistently voiced concerns about the mission, even employing colorful and deliberately provocative titles to spur debate. These include “Cut and Run? You Bet” and “Know When to Fold ‘Em.”

It is all the more remarkable that one of the most trenchant critics of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq resides (at least in a figurative sense) in a most unlikely place: the Hudson Institute, home to (until very recently) one I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and other staunch supporters of the president and his policies.  

I think that Gen. Odom represents the kind of bipartisan spirit that this blog celebrates. A career military officer who has served both Republican and Democratic presidents, Gen. Odom approaches issues on the basis of what is good for America, not what is good for the Red Team or the Blue Team.

One of Gen. Odom’s most recent articles is among his most effective; disdaining happy talk about how to turn things around, and refusing to fashion implausible win-win scenarios, Gen. Odom declares simply and emphatically “Victory Is not an Option.”

The article begins:

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush’s illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.

Its gloomy implications — hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact — put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.

Sensing that congressional reluctance to obey the public’s will is based on key misperceptions about the nature of the conflict, and of our prospects for victory, Odom demolishes four persistent myths:

1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon.

2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran’s influence from growing in Iraq.

3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

4) We must continue to fight in order to “support the troops.”

If you still believe that any one of these four concerns are valid, come hear Gen. Odom explain why they are not. And if he can’t convince you, then listen to my colleague, Ted Galen Carpenter, who has also tackled these issues in his most recent paper for the Cato Institute. Odom, Carpenter, and Steven Simon of the Council on Foreign Relations (who has also just published on the subject) will all appear at a policy forum at the Cato Institute at Noon on Wednesday, March 14th, “Escaping the Trap: The Case for Withdrawal from Iraq.”

To learn more, or to register, visit the Cato web site.
 

I read a disappointing op-ed by Michael O’Hanlon the other day that I though I would highlight here.  O’Hanlon argues that Congress should give Bush’s surge strategy a chance and then prepare for the real fight that will happen in the Fall over how to get out of Iraq. 

I’ve come across very few people who believe that this “surge” that the President has proposed will actually be successful.  I guess that depends, though, on what one’s definition of success is.  If success is simply holding our ground in Iraq, then, yes, possibly the surge might be able to accomplish that.  However, if the success is actually improving the situation in Iraq for ordinary Iraqis, then I’m fairly certain that it will fail. 

This is not to say that a military solution to this quagmire couldn’t work in the short term.  A calculation based on the ratio provided in the army’s counterinsurgency manual authored by Gen. Petraeus indicates that we would need many more troops than are being provided through the “surge”.  

Sarah Sewall has a interesting evaluation of the “surge” here in comparison to the tactics promoted in the counterinsurgency manual.  Basically the surge brings us up to 80,000 troops (US and Iraqi) in Baghdad, which is still quite short of the 120,000 that the manual indicates are necessary for a successful counterinsurgency campaign.  Although this may not seem like a tremendous deficit, we’re only talking about Baghdad here.  If you use the ratio of 20-25 soldiers and police for every 1000 in population, you get a troop size of between 535,000 to 670,000.  I would concede that if there were half a million troops in Iraq actively fighting the insurgency, we might have a real chance of defeating it.  However, I’ve heard no one call for such an increase.  It would certainly require a draft in the US.  If you think opposition to the war is strong now, just wait till draft letters are sent out in the mail.  (more…)

Karen DeYoung and Tom Ricks’ front page story from Monday’s Washington Post (“No U.S. Backup Strategy for Iraq”) cast a pall over an already exceedingly gloomy Iraq debate, and my gloom hasn’t been dispelled by the Democrats tortuous attempts this past week to fashion a coherent strategy on funding for the war, and now, finally, to coalesce behind a legislative push for removing U.S. troops from Iraq. A proposal in the Senate sets a “goal” of withdrawal of most troops by the end of March 2008. A House bill would end combat duties for U.S. troops by the end of August 2008. (See stories here and here.)

Notwithstanding these efforts, I am reluctantly forced to conclude the following: there will be a sizable number of U.S. troops in Iraq well into 2009, and the bulk of forces likely will not be removed until 2010, at the earliest. A new president in the Oval Office in January 2009, even one committed to an immediate withdrawal, could not execute such a plan in a matter of months. Stabilizing a country torn by ethnic rivalry and scores to settle is a time-consuming and costly process. We haven’t begun to pay all those costs. As the New York Times reported, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus:

warned on Thursday that American troops there faced a long road ahead and left open the possibility of calling in even more soldiers to calm the country. He stressed the long-term nature of the effort and asserted a need for open-endedness in the American commitment.  

I am deeply pessimistic that congressional action will succeed in forcing President Bush’s hand, and events on the ground are unlikely to change to the point where the president can say we have achieved victory, and now it is time to remove our forces from the country.  

That doesn’t obviate the need for a debate, and this is not to discourage the many well-meaning people who are trying to bring this disastrous war to an early end. For one thing, their efforts ensure that the bitter dead-enders, those who would defend this war to the last drop of (someone else’s) blood, must face the American people on a daily basis. When the supporters of this war dismiss talk of any alternative to “victory”, when they reject timetables – any timetables – for withdrawal, they must at the same time spell out what they are prepared to spend, or, more accurately, what costs they are prepared to impose on their fellow citizens.

For now, the president’s nominal position is that no price is too high, but his actions belie that even he sees the Iraq mission as a classic limited war. He is not prepared to pay any price for victory; he is not prepared to mobilize the country as was done in World War II, nor should he be. If he were to admit this, however, it would reveal that, in fact, the war in Iraq is not essential to our survival as a nation.

Even supporters of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq admit that there are many factors beyond their control that could ultimately derail the effort. They presumably rest easy at night knowing that, if it fails, they tried their best, and the fault lies elsewhere. So much for “the buck stops here.” 

But there is a need for some honest soul-searching on the other side of the debate as well. (more…)

Last week the International Criminal Court Prosecutor took a big step forward in his Darfur investigations when he requested a summons to appear for Ahmad Muhammad Harun the former Minister of State for the Interior of the Government of Sudan and for Ali Kushayb, a Janjaweed militia leader in Darfur. The two men have been accused of working together and – significantly – on behalf of the government of Sudan, in committing 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Darfur people.

While this is a very positive move by the ICC, the global community in general and the U.S. in particular must do more. There are a series of important steps our government could take. However the real question is not what we need to do but why our government is not doing more. Why are we not twisting arms at the UN Security Council to get the international community to take tougher action? Why are we not stating clearly that we will give the ICC all the evidence it needs to bring human rights violators to justice?

Is this because our government is partnering with the Sudanese government as part of its war on terror? After all, we know that the CIA feted Salah Gosh, a key architect of the killing in Darfur, at Langley in 2005.

Many Court observers were surprised that Gosh was not named by the ICC Prosecutor – some of these observers suspect that the Prosecutor does not have the evidence to move against Gosh. Does the U.S. have any evidence that would help the Prosecutor? If it did could we be sure it would share it with the Prosecutor?

The President has called the killings in Darfur Genocide. Darfur is the single foreign policy issue that brings Americans together – why is the Administration refusing to back up its tough language with tough actions?

The fallout from the Washington Post expose of scandalous conditions at Walter Reed for patients in the outpatient system continues to grow. For Democrats it looks to be the gift that keeps on giving. After all, for sheer irony it doesn’t get much better than this; an administration which tars all critics of its Iraq policies as anti-American lefties who don’t support the troops has presided over a military health care system which has failed to do just that.

Consider what Sen. Joe ‘stay the course” Lieberman, (D-CT) said on MEET THE PRESS:

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN I’m afraid, Bob, that it’s the tip of the iceberg. And I think ultimately we’re going to look back and say that that extraordinary Washington Post investigative series which drew all of our attention because of the mold on the wall and the rodents on the floor at that one Building 18 at Walter Reed, did something much larger. You can fix the wall and get rid of the rodents. But what that series has uncovered, I believe, is that we are not keeping the moral responsibility we have for the men and women who are fighting for us in the war on terrorism, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. We never have made the national commitment commensurate with going to war to give our soldiers the best medical care they can receive from the battlefield to back home. In fact, we are giving them the best possible care on the battlefield and in a lot of the inpatient services at places like Walter Reed. But there’s too much paperwork. And the Veterans Administration, when the handoff from the Department of Defense to the VA occurs, the VA is just overwhelmed an not giving the kind of first-rate treatment to our veterans when they get home that they need, including particularly those who are suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome, psychiatric effects of war, and traumatic brain injury.

Are things going to get worse? Count on it. The reason is that the numbers are larger than we think, as this excerpt illustrates: (more…)

Chris Preble’s post last week on the Washington Post series about wounded U.S. soldiers lost in the outpatient wilderness at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has also caused me to dwell on this all too painful cost of war.
 
Like Chris I too am a Navy veteran, albeit back towards the end of the Vietnam War, and though I saw no combat, am all too familiar with the shabby way wounded veterans can be treated. Those who don’t remember the way it was for Vietnam veterans should go rent a copy of Born on the Fourth of July .
 
Though I touched on this in a January post I think it is worth revisiting. (more…)