Every U.S. Senator believes he or she should be president. Just listen to them talk, and watch the way they walk; it’s obvious. They’re rarely called to account, but every now and then they write something, and it goes into the record, and then someone googles it out. So take a look at this very statesmanlike op-ed that Biden and Hagel wrote four and a half years ago. Notice they had no clue what would happen after the overthrow of Saddam. Notice that they bought into the Saudi view of life, namely that nothing of merit can be accomplished until there is some deal with Israel and the Palestinians. And notice they knew, long ago, that this would be slow,and we’d have to remain for quite a while. Ten years anyway.
So here goes, from the WaPo, December, 2002:
OP-ED: Iraq: The Decade After
This op-ed originally appeared in THE WASHINGTON POST on December 20, 2002.
IRAQ: THE DECADE AFTER
By Joseph R. Biden and Chuck Hagel
The United States will face enormous challenges in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, as well as broad regional questions that must be addressed. These are both matters that members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have been focusing on for some time. During a week-long trip to the region, we came away with a better understanding of the possibilities and perils that lie ahead.
In northern Iraq we saw the extraordinary potential of Iraqis once they are out from under Saddam Hussein’s murderous hand. New hospitals, schools, roads and lively media are testimony to the determination of Iraqi Kurds and to the bravery of coalition air crews patrolling the no-fly zone. Just a few hours’ drive from the oppressive rule in Baghdad, a freely elected regional government and legislature (which we were honored to address) are embarked on a path of clear-eyed realism. While neighboring countries fear an independent Kurdistan, Kurdish leaders appear committed to working together for a united Iraq. They realize they could lose everything they have built in the past decade by pursuing independence.
Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein’s, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after — or, more accurately, the decade after — Saddam Hussein.
Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill. Various experts have testified that as many as 75,000 troops may be necessary, at a cost of up to $ 20 billion a year. That does not include the cost of the war itself, or the effort to rebuild Iraq.
Americans are largely unprepared for such an undertaking. President Bush must make clear to the American people the scale of the commitment.
The northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk is an example of the perils American forces may encounter. It sits atop valuable oil fields and is home to a mixed population of Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds. In recent years, Saddam Hussein has expelled Turkmen and Kurds as part of an “Arabization,” or ethnic cleansing, campaign. We toured a refugee camp housing 120,000 displaced people and heard countless stories of brutality and the loss of loved ones. Kirkuk could become the Iraqi version of Mitrovica, the volatile city in Kosovo where the U.N.-led administration has faced the dilemma of forcibly resettling people from various ethnic communities who have been evicted from their homes.
This is one reason why we will need our allies to help rebuild Iraq. Cementing a broad coalition today will keep the pressure on Hussein to disarm, build legitimacy for the use of force if he refuses, reduce the risks to our troops and spread the burden of securing and reconstructing Iraq. Going it alone and imposing a U.S.-led military government instead of a multinational civilian administration could turn us from liberators into occupiers, fueling resentment throughout the Arab world.
Iraq cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Disarming and stabilizing that country will be all the more difficult because of the unsettled regional environment, in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While it is essential that the United States aggressively pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace on its own merits, doing so has ancillary benefits for the disarmament of Iraq. Simply put, we will make it easier for Arab governments to participate in, or at least support, our actions in Iraq if they can show their people we are engaged in the peace process.
Meetings with Israeli officials and Palestinian reformers led us to believe new opportunities exist for American diplomacy. Recent polling shows that nearly three-quarters of Israelis and Palestinians seek reconciliation and a two-state solution. For the first time since the violence began, a majority of Palestinians support a crackdown against terrorism as part of a peace process. A large majority have no confidence in Yasser Arafat.
The key is to empower Palestinian reformers and encourage Arab moderates. President Bush should lose no time in publicly endorsing the “road map” developed by the Quartet — an informal group of mediators on the Middle East from the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. The road map provides for a series of reciprocal steps to jump-start a renewed peace process. That would give hope to Palestinian reformers and send a clear message to the Arab world that the United States remains determined to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian settlement even as we deal with Iraq.
Working on multiple fronts poses a difficult test for American leadership, but there is no escaping the fact that we face several related, interlocking crises in the region. As the bulwark of freedom and democracy, the United States faces the need to disarm Saddam Hussein and set the stage for a stable Iraq, win a protracted war on terrorism and engage fully on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Working with our friends and allies, it is a challenge we can, and must, meet.
###
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) is chairman and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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4 Comments
Russell:In contrast, and infamously, the Bush administration was selling the notion that the war would be quick, that a military commitment wouldn’t be needed beyond six months, that the cost would be modest, and that the result would spread freedom in the mideast, like dominoes falling. Compared to the war propaganda the Bush administration was catapulting, Hagel and Biden look like prophets.
ML:
I don’t get the either/or. Why can’t they all have been wrong? It’s what usually happens, after all.
Mar 29, 2007 - 9:21 pm Dominique R. Poirier:Sir,
I have read this post with much interest and I would like to express a personal opinion about your critics.
Would you mind if I brush aside for a while the fact that the persons who authored this article held official positions as Senators?
I have a sincere passion for strategy and political forecast. Actually, I believe that we reach to the best of ourselves when doing what we like the most, and that we are going along the right way if ever our professional activity ceases to be a “job” we underwent and is perceived instead as a pleasurable and even exciting activity. Few people are lucky enough to enjoy this pleasure, regretfully; and that’s why most among us have a job, at job, and a passion, at home, which each other entertain little in common in most cases.
Is that good and useful when it comes to matters as serious as foreign affairs, military affairs, and strategy? I don’t know. But I know, at least, that some specialists in some parts of the world think that strategic matters are too serious to be entertaining and consider that it must be a burdensome and exhausting task. For, by all means we shouldn’t be supposed to have fun when it comes to so serious matters.
I could hardly deny that I have been fascinated by some famous persons who excelled at strategic forecasting. I did read many books relating to those persons and think tanks. That’s why and how the statesmanlike way these two persons expressed themselves on Iraq, as you report it, strongly reminds me of a story I read in The Game of Nations, by Miles Copland, a book you did read too, certainly.
In this book, which entertains the reader about stories belonging to the Cold War era and more especially about U.S. policy in Egypt during the 50’s, the authors explains that a bunch of talented strategic thinkers hired by the Department of State reached to the best of themselves by way of literally impersonating the political leaders involved in the issues at hand during some special sessions of a sort. All this would have occurred somewhere (the Rand Corp?) around a large table and behind closed doors; and according to rules akin to those prevailing in role-playing games. Miles Copland suggests that some of the persons involved in that unusual activities even expressed some difficulties at going back to their self once sessions were over. For, there was an urging professional need for those persons to continue thinking as if they were Nasser, Khrushchev, or Eisenhower, as long as problems remained unsolved. Kermit Roosevelt would have been one among those unusual strategists.
In a much more modest fashion, I personally noticed that one of the best ways to try oneself at strategic forecasting is to attempt, as best as one can, to put oneself in the shoes of the studied leader (when it comes to leaders who are truly and fully in power) or even to imagine oneself as a whole staff of political thinkers and strategists. I did it many times when I worked in advertising because I considered that there was much at stake for our customers.
When the need arises, and back to geopolitics, another “tricks” I found consists of imagining oneself as a kind of giant walking on a huge political map, walking back and forth toward such or such border or coasts. Two or three steps downward to the right and… Yep, there it is! You can see things from Saudi Arabia. Ouch! How huge, hot, desert, and hard to defend it is over here.
There is a need at some point to get into a peculiar mood or state of the mind, in my own opinion. Well, my point is that how could you guess what a person such as Ahmadinejad, Putin, or Chavez might do next if you still are, in your mind, John Smith, a GS-13 employee working in a 100 square feet office somewhere in Virginia. How could you provide very important recommendations to no less than the President of the United States while constantly bearing in mind that you are no more than a humble and unknown lecturer at Harvard? Wouldn’t things go better and easier if you feel instead that you are the President, indeed; and that what you are going to do may have tremendous influence upon the life of millions of persons? What are you going to say to the people who elected you during your next speech, if you make this move? Would the Pentagon be OK with such a bold step?
I think that, in this second case –meaning in impersonating the President– your best recommendation to the President might be different. That is, closer to the expectations of the President and to those of the National Interest.
However, I couldn’t but notice that this way of doing things, when experienced, continues to exert noticeable influence on one’s way to put one’s thoughts on a paper. In other words, you may easily write as if you were a president or a general; a fact which, as you said, may easily expose to deserved critics.
That why I dare to hazard the suggestion that, perhaps, that’s what happened to Joseph R. Biden and Chuck Hagel, because I have to confess that it is exactly the way along which I did things sometimes.
I express more than respect for your knowledge and experience about the matter on which I am venturing here. That’s why, please, consider this comment just as what it is: personal opinion and suggestions.
Best regards,
Mar 30, 2007 - 1:25 pm Azad Andish - Tehran:Did you read:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/30/opinion/edhastings.php?
The article is titled: “The vicious victim”. Its essence is :
“We must keep talking to the Iranians, offering carrots even when these are contemptuously tossed into the gutter, because there is no credible alternative. Even threats of economic sanctions must be considered cautiously. Their most likely consequence would be to feed Iranian paranoia, to strengthen the hand of Tehran’s extremists.”
“Only patience, statesmanship and a refusal to respond in kind to outrageous behavior offer a chance of eventually persuading this dangerous nation to join a rational universe.”
Well done. Europe must offer carrots and mullahs will use the stick. A good solution.They can also ask Mr Carter how to beg terrorists to free the hostages. He has a good experience. He stayed patient for 444 days. Why shouldn’t Europeans wait that much.
But what annoys me more is that the genius writer of the article calls our nation a “dangerous nation”. We are a desperate nation. We are under the ruling of a pre-historian brutal regime from one side and are called dangerous by the other side.
ML:
Yeah, it’s tough for anyone who loves freedom these days.
Mar 30, 2007 - 1:45 pm Winston:Why some of these senators become clueless over the time?
ML:
they all think they should be president. it’s seemingly automatic once they get to the senate. just look at webb, for example, he’s barely been there and already he’s acting presidential, as he sees it.
Apr 2, 2007 - 12:30 am