Positions on the Surge
Democratic Factions
1. Mainstream Congressional leaders: While the surge may have temporary success, it cannot equate to strategic stability. The Iraqis have failed to create political reform sufficient to result in a viable reform government: slowly get out now.
2. Liberal Congressional leaders: Even if the surge works, and even if stability follows, 3700 lives and $600 billion weren’t worth it. Support the troops, but not a single Marine was worth all of Iraq: get out now!
3. A few mavericks: Finally, the administration, wallowing in repeated error, listened to our cries in the wilderness. Thus after taking our recommendations to remove Sec. Rumsfeld, change the generals in Iraq and Centcom, and send in more troops, they have seen the light. The last four years were squandered, but thanks to us, Iraq is not yet lost: stabilize the country, and only then withdraw.
4. The Hard Left: This was always a cooked-up war for oil, Halliburton, a savage military, and the Neocons. An American defeat serves as a timely lesson for our hubris. Get out now!
Republican factions
1. Mainstream Republicans: despite all the errors, unfortunately not rare in war, Iraq is on the path to becoming a viable state that will not translate its natural wealth into wars against its neighbors, and now fights rather than subsidizes terrorists. The war can be won and will be, and in retrospect with far more positive than negative consequences: keep the amount of troops in Iraq that the military feels is necessary to allow the government there to quell violence and perform its duties—the only safe way to disengage.
2. Hard Neocon: taking out Saddam went smoothly. Letting the State Department in on the occupation was a terrible mistake, as was letting Syria and Iran off the hook. We won’t have peace until Iraq’s neighbors are tamed. Iran must be addressed: stay on and hit terrorist enclaves along the borders, with all options open.
3. Realist: None of these countries are reliable. We should accept their authoritarianism as innate, and their governments as they are—and thus make sure no single one becomes more powerful than any other. We can always use stand-off bombing in a purely punishing manner should they send terrorists after our interests, but under no circumstances fight on the ground inside a Muslim country: Get out now, at best under UN auspices or with regional partners’ peacekeeping forces—or by trisecting the country into friends and enemies.
4 Paleo-con/Libertarian: : This was always a cooked-up war for oil, big government, Israel, and its apologist Neocons. An American defeat serves as a timely lesson for the evils of foreign involvement, the garrison state, and big government: Get out now!
All these positions of course shift and overlap, and their adherents (with the exception of the hard left and right) often show no consistency, but rather adapt views to the 24-hour news cycle emanating out of Iraq. Which position prevails upon the public, depends on the next 60 days and the news from Iraq. Should Iraq blow up, and get worse, opponents will gravitate to the Hard Left and Paleo-con/Libertarian view; should it show signs of improvement, moderate and mainstream Democrats will gravitate to mainstream Republican; should it suddenly become absolutely quiet and no longer a war, the hard neo-con position will want to expand on the victory.
My own position? About the same as always: mainstream Republican, a Jacksonian one of support for the war that is ongoing, confidence that it addresses the root cause of the events that we saw six years ago.
Sicily
One of the favorite analogies of Iraq is the evocation of the Athenian invasion of Sicily (415-13 B.C.) and the democracy’s defeat there by democratic Syracuse (40,000 Athenians and their allies lost). It was certainly a catastrophic mistake to attack Sicily at a time of an uneasy respite with Sparta.
But for some strange reason, the historian Thucydides, after chronicling the lapses, still believed the Athenians might have won (and indeed they almost did), had they not been torn apart by bickering at home—usually thought to be a reference to the recall of Alcibiades. It is difficult to know exactly how Thucydides thought the operation might have worked—a different commander than Nicias?; had Lamachus not perished?; had the armada brought more horses?; etc.).
But an analogy to Iraq makes no sense. Sicily was, by some accounts, the largest city-state in the Greek-speaking world. And it was democratic as well—at a time that Athens was trying to wage a war of ideology that pitted democratic allies and subject states against Sparta’s oligarchy and its sympathetic partners and friends. A better modern parallel might have been made had the United States attacked larger, democratic India right in the middle of the Afghan war. Apparently, because democratic Athens lost the Peloponnesian war, and did not ever fully recover from Sicily, so too it is simply claimed that the United States has lost in Iraq, a precursor of general American decline.
Ron Paul’s complaint
I watched Ron Paul last night make the argument that something the United States had done—like deploy troops in the Gulf—had earned the jihadists’ attacks. True, bin Laden at one time listed three casus belli: U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the UN boycott of Iraq, and support for Israel.
Two points: first, yes, U.S. troops were in Saudi–on the invitation of the terrified Saudi government to stop Saddam Hussein from swallowing it as he did Kuwait, and were sequestered far out in the desert, distant from shrines, mosques—and most Saudis. Careful reading will show all that infuriated bin Laden primarily because he had begged the House of Saud in 1990 to let his jihadists fight Saddam in some sort of terrorist campaign. That request was turned down since there were 500,000 Iraqis, with sophisticated arms, ready to pounce, but it created a level of outrage in bin Laden at the infidel who instead won the day.
Second, the UN boycott orchestrated by Bill Clinton was designed to preclude war, and to ensure that Saddam did not purchase with oil money more sophisticated weapons to attack his Muslim neighbors and kill more of his own Muslims.
Third, as far as Israel goes, since the Camp David accords, the U.S. has tried to match Israeli aid with generous monies given Egypt (over $50 billion by now, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority.) And often friends supposedly asked bin Laden why after 1988, he did not locate to the West Bank or Gaza to wage his war against the hated Israelis, whom he had identified as the real enemies. The unspoken answer, of course, is that he thought it safer to attack the U.S. in the 1990s than to strike head-on Israel from next-door, something perceived tantamount to a death sentence.
Moreover, two of these writs are no longer valid, and yet the jihadists continue manufacturing new ones, since their anger is existential and their grievances bogus.
But more importantly, even a brief scan of Peter Bergen’s The Osama bin Laden I Know will reveal dozens of various reasons why al Qaeda (in bin Laden’s own words) chose to attack—Jewish women walking around in Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, a general Western decadence, supposed massacres of Muslims in Burma, Kashmir, Somalia, and the Philippines; the arrests and detentions of Muslim “scholars;” attacks on Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan; theft of petroleum; support for the Saudi and Egyptian governments. In Raymond Ibrahim’s recent The al Qaeda Reader we even learn of furor over our financing of elections, and failure to sign Kyoto.
Finally, the discussion omits the US salvation of Muslim Kuwait, the effort to feed Muslims in Somalia, our criticism leveled against Russia for Chechnya, the bombing of Milosevic to save Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia; and billions given to a number of Arab countries, as well as generous immigration policies that have allowed many millions to emigrate to Europe and the United States to practice their religion freely and express themselves openly in a fashion unimaginable for Westerners in most of their own countries of origin.
As far as what tipped the scale and made these talking points translate into action in the 1990s, I think there were two reasons. The “Afghan Arabs” were able to exaggerate their own role in the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, and play down both the efforts of Massoud and the Northern Alliance, and the critical use by the warlords of American missiles and weaponry. To bin Laden, the biggest slur was that the resistance had benefited from US aid.
That sense of triumphalism was matched by a policy of not retaliating against terrorists, to any significant degree, for most of the 1990s. The World Trade Center, slain individuals abroad, barracks, embassies, and war-ships were all targets. Rightly or wrongly, especially after Mogadishu, bin Laden decided that he was unstoppable after Afghanistan and had little to fear from the United States. Once he “broke up” the United States, the same level of honor and status would accrue to him that he was claiming after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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7 Comments
Abdi:What the American administration has done is Somalia could only be described as very harsh and crude.
The international community has forgotten about Somalia and has left the Somali people at the hands of callous warlords that care nothing whatsoever about law and order and peace in Somalia.
Therefore the Somali people took it upon themselves to put their house in order, they formed the union of Islamic courts to bring back the rule of law so that children can go back to schools and people can have normal lives.
The union of Islamic courts had the support of the majority of Somali people; they have proven to take the issue of the rule of law seriously.
Yes I know that many of u might think that the Islamic courts were just too restrictive in their ideas, but the vast majority were moderates.
The Somali people just wanted peace; they did not care about freedom to drink alcohol etc.
Now the United States government has helped the most hated warlords back to power in Somalia, the same warlords that killed 18 Americans.Plus they have made the vast majority of moderate Somalis now fundamentalist, the same ones that fight the Ethiopian invaders day and night in the city of Mogadishu.
Somalia has had six months of blessed peace with the UIC and now they are back to the killings, rape, and robbery thanks to bad American intervention and now there are 400, 000 Somalis that have left their homes without food and clean water, and 3,000 Somalis have died so far.
Tell me people who are the real terrorist, i would say that the bush administration are the biggest terrorist.
The west yells about the so call ‘’genocide’’ that is being committed in Darfur but they are so silent about the genocide taking place in Somalia, which they are definitely behind.
The US government does not respect international law, infact it does not even care bat upholding its own UN security resolution, where it stated that Ethiopian troops should not invade Somalia.In all this mess why is the UN so silent, they have not even said a word about Ethiopian troops invading Somalia, what happened to respecting a countries boundary?
It seems that the world follows the rule of the jungle.
Like i said the UIC gave the Somali people what many others could not, and that’s peace, law, unity.
Now since the UIC government has been replaced by the US sponsored Warlord Government (the same guys that killed 18 marines which was well documented in that film Black Hawk down) there have been 400, 000 Somalis that fled their homes in Mogadishu and into the countryside without clean water, food, and basic needs.Plus 3,000 Somalis have died.
The Ethiopian military seems to make things worse in Somalia, they are committing crimes against humanity, committing genocide.Most Americans sit in your comfortable home, drinking your coffee and u speak about a people and a situation that u have very little knowledge of.
Please go and do some research, read some articles, don’t just watch Fox, CNN etc news.As an African who have the people of Somali at heart, you people don’t understand what the actions of the Bush Administration has resulted in Somalia and the Horn of Africa.I just wish that u guys were better informed.
Nowadays there are very few independent Journalist that tell the Truth, the mainstream media seems to be controlled and they all spit out the same liesThere is so much information that is being hidden, especially what happened in SomaliaPlease people, watch this documentary about life under the Islamic courts.
Compare the rule of the Islamic courts with the rule of the warlord US sponsored warlord Government.
This US administration seems hell bent of causing Havoc in the Horn of Africa, Infact as a write this now the United States Government is encouraging the dictator meles of Ethiopia to attack Eritrea, which would be very bad for the people of the Horn.Where there were no terrorist sympathizers in the Horn, now there are so many, thanks to misguided US policy, If Iraq was not enough they had to move on to somalia.
I just wish the American people really knew what their government was up to in Africa, instead of fostering peace, they foster warlords to kill Somalis, instead of encouraging dictators such as the one in Ethiopia to respect the rule of law, they advise him to break it and invade Somalia.
Even in ethiopia the situation is very bad, you have one tribe in ethiopia who the dictator of Ethiopia hails from ruling countless other tribes with brute force, Executives and human right violations in the norm of the day in Ethiopia.
Infact Mr meles is committing a genocide against the people of Ogaden whos rebels killed 9 chinese oil workers around 3 months ago.
I wish the few reasonable people of America that stand for peace and justice can hold to account the Bush administration’s Human rights abuses.America stands for terror, corruption i.e. by supporting and funding dictators like the presidents of Egypt and Pakistan and the prime minister of Ethiopia.
By the way if for whatever reason that the US government refused to accept the UIC government of Somalia, they should have put in place another institution that can compete with the UIC goverment to win the hearts and minds of the Somali people.
The fact that the US government choose to side with the coalition of warlords that were armed and financed by Ethiopia to continue the instability in Somalia, is extremely worrying to the Somali people and does not serve the interest of Somalia.
Sep 6, 2007 - 12:59 pm Ian F:Why is Hollywood consistently anti-American, portraying US Soldiers as rapists and bloodthirsty beasts, while the jihadists get a pass as being someone who’s plight we should all sympathize with? I guess only a terrorist attack in Hollywood could make them wake up, but I fear even this wouldn’t do the trick. Can it all be blamed on Bush-derangement syndrome, and will it ever stop? Thinking back to my childhood characters like Joe Rambo, G.I. Joe, Top Gun, and others who made patriotism cool for a kid seem like a world apart from today’s “heroes” and movie characters. Could you write on Hollywood’s portrayal of terrorism and war? Is there any hope for the future of Movies and Television?
Sep 6, 2007 - 4:01 pm Don Hodun:Prof Hanson,
Enjoyed the categorization of Dems and Reps.
I agree with your take on the Sicily comparison. It holds no water at all. Anyone thinking of making that claim should read your book first, seems to me.
Appreciate your postings here - you are a voice of reason in the wilderness.
Sep 7, 2007 - 10:55 am sheryl:VDH is correct. I wish more politicians would verbalize this and educate their voters to the fact the Islamist terrorist’s anger and their grievances are rooted in political expediency.
Also, in regards to VDH’s mention of not retaliating in the 1990’s against terrorism; I would add to that thought that we erred in not paying attention to what was happening in Algeria in the 1990’s.
The intense brutality by the men from this Islamist terror movement killed over 100,000 Muslim Algerians & simply wipes away any notion that our foreign policy drives their cause.
Sep 7, 2007 - 11:59 am WillyShake:As if called upon to give a reductio ad absurdum response to the Scheuer thesis Ron Paul invokes, here come the latest ravings of Osama bin Laden (actual date unknown)–which make Scheuer, Paul, and others–including OBL himself–look silly…NATCH!
Sep 7, 2007 - 2:05 pm TBranin:Professor Hanson!
I love your analysis and follow it assiduously.
I would recommend all here read Diana West’s, The Death of the Grown-Up. I got onto it from Bruce Thornton’s terrific review. Finally, I feel that someone has very, very accurately analyzed the cause of the state of malaise and apathy in this country. I am old enough to have experienced first hand the cultural upheavals and events from which she studiously draws her analysis. This book is a real sleeper in that it is too closely reasoned to be read quickly for full comprehension - maybe that only applies to myself. In short, a brilliant work by a brilliant mind with a beautiful prose style. I would rank it with Mark Steyn’s America Alone.
I no longer concern myself too much with any criticism by the left. Islam is the enemy, and it must be defeated unconditionally.
Sep 10, 2007 - 2:12 pm DyerJE:For Abdi -
It is always interesting to hear viewpoints seldom expressed in Western forums. You may have written here before, but I am a first-timer.
As a military intelligence officer who did actually study the Horn of Africa for some years, I am reasonably familiar with the conflicts and factions you cite. I’m not surprised at your perspective that in Mogadishu, at least, and probably down the coast to Kismayo, the UIC brought a measure of order and stability you had not seen for a long time.
The US did not, in fact, urge Ethiopia to invade Somalia last year. Ethiopia concluded, on its own intelligence and for its own reasons, that a UIC-led Somalia was a threat to its interests. While America has concerns about extended failures in Ethiopia to resolve the infighting following the 2002 election, and has never been a major supporter of Ethiopia, we also regarded the UIC with concern.
The overriding concern of the US government was clear intelligence that the UIC had ties to transnational Islamic terrorist groups, and that it received funds from the same Saudi individuals and organizations that fund the terrorists. There was also persistent, corroborated intelligence that members of transnational Islamic terrorist groups had maintained camps and storehouses, mostly on Somalia’s coast, for several years (going back to at least 1998).
None of this is or was interpreted to mean that Islamic terror put the UIC in power, or that the UIC was in a specific, big conspiracy with international terrorists. The concern, rather, is that given the UIC’s known associations, it was likely that the UIC would allow Somalia to be used as a base of operations for transnational terrorists, similar to the cooperation of the Afghan Taliban with Al Qaeda.
In fact, the evidence that Somalia was a convenient “haven” for terrorists even before the UIC attained power in the south, and that terrorists continued to use that area as a haven under UIC rule, was very solid. (From my own perspective, I would say the level of public rhetoric by men like Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys was lower and less violent or anti-US than what we saw from the Taliban. However, the UIC’s associations with declared enemies of the US were well established.)
This day — September 11 — marks the anniversary of the day six years ago when America saw the consequences of not taking this kind of possibility seriously. If Somalis can only be happy being governed by Islamists who cooperate with transnational terrorists, and receive their support from the same sources as those terrorists, then it is hardly surprising that the American government will not actively support such an arrangement – and will even consider it positive for American security when the arrangement is overturned by a third party.
I wonder if a UIC government of Somalia would be willing to sever ties with transnational Islamic terrorists, deny them the territory of Somalia for any purpose, and join with Kenya, Djibouti, and even Ethiopia in suppressing extremist terrorism. If not, then its status with some factions in Somalia can’t be the controlling factor in American policy toward it. It’s worth noting that Western nations, including Americans, achieve high levels of both public order and individual freedom by taking a categorical attitude about things like terrorism. No partisan purpose can justify it – no partisan purpose matters when it is used. It has to be eliminated.
Sep 11, 2007 - 12:03 pm