Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy
U.S. May Be Winning Battles in Iraq But Losing the War, Some Officers Say
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A01
Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers beginning to say that the United States faces the prospect of casualties for years without achieving its goal of establishing a free and democratic Iraq.
Their major worry is that the United States is prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people. That view is far from universal, but it is spreading and being voiced publicly for the first time.
Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, "I think strategically, we are."
Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he said in an interview Friday.
"I lost my brother in Vietnam," added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. "I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in."
The emergence of sharp differences over U.S. strategy has set off a debate, a year after the United States ostensibly won a war in Iraq, about how to preserve that victory. The core question is how to end a festering insurrection that has stymied some reconstruction efforts, made many Iraqis feel less safe and created uncertainty about who actually will run the country after the scheduled turnover of sovereignty June 30.
Inside and outside the armed forces, experts generally argue that the U.S. military should remain there but should change its approach. Some argue for more troops, others for less, but they generally agree on revising the stated U.S. goals to make them less ambitious. They are worried by evidence that the United States is losing ground with the Iraqi public.
Some officers say the place to begin restructuring U.S. policy is by ousting Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whom they see as responsible for a series of strategic and tactical blunders over the past year. Several of those interviewed said a profound anger is building within the Army at Rumsfeld and those around him.
A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. "It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this," he said. "The American people may not stand for it -- and they should not."
Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion," he said. "Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice."
Like several other officers interviewed for this report, this general spoke only on the condition that his name not be used. One reason for this is that some of these officers deal frequently with the senior Pentagon civilian officials they are criticizing, and some remain dependent on top officials to approve their current efforts and future promotions. Also, some say they believe that Rumsfeld and other top civilians punish public dissent. Senior officers frequently cite what they believe was the vindictive treatment of then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki after he said early in 2003 that the administration was underestimating the number of U.S. troops that would be required to occupy postwar Iraq.
Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's No. 2 official, said he does not think the United States is losing in Iraq, and said no senior officer has expressed that thought to him, either. "I am sure that there are some out there" who think that, he said in an interview yesterday afternoon.
"There's no question that we're facing some difficulties," Wolfowitz said. "I don't mean to sound Pollyannaish -- we all know that we're facing a tough problem." But, he said, "I think the course we've set is the right one, which is moving as rapidly as possible to Iraqi self-government and Iraqi self-defense."
Wolfowitz, who is widely seen as the intellectual architect of the Bush administration's desire to create a free and democratic Iraq that will begin the transformation of the politics of the Middle East, also strongly rejected the idea of scaling back on that aim. "The goal has never been to win the Olympic high jump in democracy," he said. Moving toward democratization in Iraq will take time, he said. Yet, he continued, "I don't think the answer is to find some old Republican Guard generals and have them impose yet another dictatorship in an Arab country."
The top U.S. commander in the war also said he strongly disagrees with the view that the United States is heading toward defeat in Iraq. "We are not losing, militarily," Army Gen. John Abizaid said in an interview Friday. He said that the U.S. military is winning tactically. But he stopped short of being as positive about the overall trend. Rather, he said, "strategically, I think there are opportunities."
The prisoner abuse scandal and the continuing car bombings and U.S. casualties "create the image of a military that's not being effective in the counterinsurgency," he said. But in reality, "the truth of the matter is . . . there are some good signals out there."
Abizaid cited the resumption of economic reconstruction and the political progress made with Sunni Muslims in resolving the standoff around Fallujah, and increasing cooperation from Shiite Muslims in isolating radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. "I'm looking at the situation, and I told the secretary of defense the other day I feel pretty comfortable with where we are," he said.
Even so, he said, "There's liable to be a lot of fighting in May and June," as the June 30 date for turning over sovereignty to an Iraqi government approaches.
Commanders on the ground in Iraq seconded that cautiously optimistic view.
"I am sure that the view from Washington is much worse than it appears on the ground here in Baqubah," said Army Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, commander of a 1st Infantry Division brigade based in that city about 40 miles north of Baghdad. "I do not think that we are losing, but we will lose if we are not careful." He said he is especially worried about maintaining political and economic progress in the provinces after the turnover of power.
Army Lt. Col. John Kem, a battalion commander in Baghdad, said that the events of the past two months -- first the eruption of a Shiite insurgency, followed by the detainee abuse scandal -- "certainly made things harder," but he said he doubted they would have much effect on the long-term future of Iraq.
But some say that behind those official positions lies deep concern.
One Pentagon consultant said that officials with whom he works on Iraq policy continue to put on a happy face publicly, but privately are grim about the situation in Baghdad. When it comes to discussions of the administration's Iraq policy, he said, "It's 'Dead Man Walking.' "
The worried generals and colonels are simply beginning to say what experts outside the military have been saying for weeks.
In mid-April, even before the prison detainee scandal, Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, wrote in the New York Review of Books that "patience with foreign occupation is running out, and violent opposition is spreading. Civil war and the breakup of Iraq are more likely outcomes than a successful transition to a pluralistic Western-style democracy." The New York Review of Books is not widely read in the U.S. military, but the article, titled "How to Get Out of Iraq," was carried online and began circulating among some military intellectuals.
Likewise, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), a former Marine who is one of most hawkish Democrats in Congress, said last week: "We cannot prevail in this war as it is going today," and said that the Bush administration should either boost its troop numbers or withdraw.
Larry Diamond, who until recently was a senior political adviser of the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, argued that the United States is not losing the war but is in danger of doing so. "I think that we have fallen into a period of real political difficulty where we are no longer clearly winning the peace, and where the prospect of a successful transition to democracy is in doubt.
"Basically, it's up in the air now," Diamond continued. "That's what is at stake. . . . We can't keep making tactical and strategic mistakes."
He and others are recommending a series of related revisions to the U.S. approach.
Like many in the Special Forces, defense consultant Michael Vickers advocates radically trimming the U.S. presence in Iraq, making it much more like the one in Afghanistan, where there are 20,000 troops and almost none in the capital, Kabul. The U.S. military has a small presence in the daily life of Afghans. Basically, it ignores them and focuses its attention on fighting pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda holdouts. Nor has it tried to disarm the militias that control much of the country.
In addition to trimming the U.S. troop presence, a young Army general said, the United States also should curtail its ambitions in Iraq. "That strategic objective, of a free, democratic, de-Baathified Iraq, is grandiose and unattainable," he said. "It's just a matter of time before we revise downward . . . and abandon these ridiculous objectives."
Instead, he predicted that if the Bush administration wins reelection, it simply will settle for a stable Iraq, probably run by former Iraqi generals. This is more or less, he said, what the Marines Corps did in Fallujah -- which he described as a glimpse of future U.S. policy.
Wolfowitz sharply rejected that conclusion about Fallujah. "Let's be clear, Fallujah has always been an outlier since the liberation of Baghdad," he said in the interview. "It's where the trouble began. . . . It really isn't a model for anything for the rest of the country."
But a senior military intelligence officer experienced in Middle Eastern affairs said he thinks the administration needs to rethink its approach to Iraq and to the region. "The idea that Iraq can be miraculously and quickly turned into a shining example of democracy that will 'transform' the Middle East requires way too much fairy dust and cultural arrogance to believe," he said.
Finally, some are calling for the United States to stop fighting separatist trends among Iraq's three major groups, the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds, and instead embrace them. "The best hope for holding Iraq together -- and thereby avoiding civil war -- is to let each of its major constituent communities have, to the extent possible, the system each wants," Galbraith wrote last month.
Even if adjustments in troop presence and goals help the United States prevail, it will not happen soon, several of those interviewed said. The United States is likely to be fighting in Iraq for at least another five years, said an Army officer who served there. "We'll be taking casualties," he warned, during that entire time.
A long-term problem for any administration is that it may be difficult for the American public to tell whether the United States is winning or losing, and the prospect of continued casualties may prompt some to ask of how long the public will tolerate the fighting.
"Iraq might have been worth doing at some price," Vickers said. "But it isn't worth doing at any price. And the price has gone very high."
The other key factor in the war is Iraqi public opinion. A recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that a majority of Iraqis want the United States to leave immediately. "In Iraq, we are rapidly losing the support of the middle, which will enable the insurgency to persist practically indefinitely until our national resolve is worn down," the senior U.S. military intelligence officer said.
Tolerance of the situation in Iraq also appears to be declining within the U.S. military. Especially among career Army officers, an extraordinary anger is building at Rumsfeld and his top advisers.
"Like a lot of senior Army guys, I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration, the young general said. He listed two reasons. "One is, I think they are going to break the Army." But what really incites him, he said, is, "I don't think they care."
Jeff Smith, a former general counsel of the CIA who has close ties to many senior officers, said, "Some of my friends in the military are exceedingly angry." In the Army, he said, "It's pretty bitter."
Retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a frequent Pentagon consultant, said, "The people in the military are mad as hell." He said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, should be fired. A spokesman for Myers declined to comment.
A Special Forces officer aimed higher, saying that "Rumsfeld needs to go, as does Wolfowitz."
Asked about such antagonism, Wolfowitz said, "I wish they'd have the -- whatever it takes -- to come tell me to my face."
He said that by contrast, he had been "struck at how many fairly senior officers have come to me" to tell him that he and Rumsfeld have made the right decisions concerning the Army.
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
>> BEYOND CVID...
US mantra: N Korea nukes must go, but how?
By Ralph A Cossa
(Used by permission of Pacific Forum CSIS)
With a six-party working-group meeting about to take place in Beijing, in which North Korea has agreed to participate, Washington has said that its position toward the Hermit Kingdom remains unchanged: it seeks the "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" of North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons programs, or CVID for short. Yet, despite its repeated devotion to the acronym, Washington has not been entirely specific as to what CVID means, or to what it fully entails.
True, North Korea has agreed to participate in a six-party working-group meeting on May 12 to help lay the groundwork for the third session of the more senior-level six-party talks (among North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States), which are anticipated before the end of June. However, in regard to CVID, assistant secretary of state James Kelly, who heads the US delegation at the plenary sessions, recently told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "that acronym (CVID) and the important goal it represents [have] been accepted by all but the North Koreans."
While it is also true that all parties (including North Korea) profess to seek a nuclear weapons free Korean Peninsula, and the others (less North Korea) at least pay lip serve to the CVID objective, it is not clear that all agree on the definition of its components.
Dissecting CVID
Washington has made it clear that "complete" means the dismantlement of both plutonium and uranium enrichment-based programs. But, despite the highly publicized confession by the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, that he had sold uranium-enrichment equipment to North Korea, Pyongyang continues to deny having a uranium-based weapons program, and several other members of the six-party process seem openly skeptical of Washington's accusations (or more willing to disregard the evidence, even if it might be true). Thus, it would appear that North Korea's (also known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK's) acknowledgment of a uranium-enrichment program - and a willingness by the others to press Pyongyang on this point - must be the first order of business at the working-group meeting, if there is to be any hope for future progress.
"Verifiable" means just that. It has long been acknowledged that devising a verification regime intrusive enough to satisfy hardline skeptics will be no mean feat. This is why the "Libyan model" is potentially so important. As Kelly told Congress, "the DPRK needs to make a strategic choice for transformed relations with the United States and the world - as other countries have done, including quite recently - to abandon all of its nuclear programs." In case the reference was too subtle, Kelly later noted that he "discussed Libya's example with our North Korean counterparts, and we hope they understand its significance". In truth, verification can only work if the North cooperates in turning in its hidden hardware - not to mentioned reprocessed plutonium. Taking an Iraqi-style "catch me if you can" approach seems unworkable.
The definition of "irreversible" remains subject to the most interpretation. At a minimum, it would seem to require an end to all DPRK nuclear programs, including energy-associated efforts (both production and reprocessing), to guard against future backsliding. Pyongyang has, at times, intimated that its "peaceful nuclear energy program" might also be put on the bargaining table - if the price is right. Washington has argued that there is no "peaceful" program and has made no secret of its desire to avoid an Agreed Framework II. The first Agreed Framework was decided in 1994, when both the US and North Korea reaffirmed the importance of achieving peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, however, no serious movement came from the safeguards outlined in the framework, and much of it was later postponed. Thus, the US and the DPRK have decided to take the "freeze" approach for the resolution of the nuclear issue or a revival of any light water reactor (LWR) programs, although the US has yet to formally demand an end to all nuclear energy-related programs.
Washington sees "dismantlement" as an action, not as a future promise. Previously, it had dismissed North Korean "freeze" proposals, saying it would not reward North Korea for merely honoring past (broken) promises. However, a breakthrough now seems possible in this area, depending on how Pyongyang defines its current "reward for freeze" proposal. While US incentives will only come after dismantlement begins - which is itself a step beyond the [President George W] Bush administration's "no rewards until dismantlement is complete" approach - Washington has indicated that it would not object to a South Korean plan to offer energy assistance to North Korea in return for a "complete and verifiable" freeze, as long as the freeze were identified as "a first step toward dismantlement".
For any freeze proposal to work, however, it must encompass all of North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons programs, both plutonium and uranium-based. It must also be accompanied by a return of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and monitoring devices to North Korea, removed in 2002. Therefore, success at the May 12 working-level talks, like success at the more senior-level six-party talks that will hopefully follow before the end of June, continues to rest on North Korea becoming more forthcoming on the full extent of its nuclear programs, and for China, South Korea and others to insist that any freeze be "complete and verifiable" before significant new rewards are provided to Pyongyang.
Ralph A Cossa is president of the Pacific Forum CSIS [pacforum@hawaii.rr.com], a Honolulu-based non-profit research institute, which made this article available.
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Iran, North Korea and proliferation
By Ritt Goldstein
Part 1: US neo-cons and war
Part 2: Preemption and an arms race with itself
In early February, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted that he was instrumental in the sale of nuclear weapons technology to Iran and Libya. America's top arms control official, John Bolton, outlined that the Pakistani network sold "technology for enriching uranium as well as warhead designs to Iran, North Korea and Libya", according to the San Francisco Chronicle. And concerns exist that the warhead blueprints may have gone considerably further.
Notably, the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports that Pakistani nuclear weapons cooperation with North Korea "accelerated in the 1990s". But in an amazing example of Bush administration spin, Bolton described the February revelations of the Pakistani operation as "a great intelligence success", arguing that the incident represented "an enormous victory", the Chronicle reported. And while the Bush administration has accepted Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's assertions that Khan acted independently, a Washington coverup is widely understood.
US security and defense expert John Pike of Global Security observed for Asia Times Online: "Pakistan has been an extremely good partner to the US in the war on terrorism, because the US, to include the president of the US, has been prepared to lie publicly about their nuclear proliferation activities ... it was an established government [of Pakistan] policy."
A CRS report from March 11 notes that one account of events "states generals Musharraf, [Jehangir] Karamat and [Abdul ] Waheed knew of aid to North Korea when they were chiefs of the army staff". And two former Pakistani prime ministers' political parties have expressed concerns that Khan - who was immediately granted a pardon on his "confession" - is merely a handy scapegoat.
The CRS notes that Pakistan and North Korea have had a long cooperation on missile technology. CRS also questions whether a 1996 Pakistani foreign-currency crisis led the government to swap nuclear weapons technology, doing so in lieu of missile payments then allegedly due to Pyongyang. Moreover, while North Korea has never tested a nuclear device, the CRS cites "some reports" that in 1998 Pakistan tested a plutonium bomb for them.
Pike also spoke to this issue, noting that the detonation in question took place far from the site of Pakistan's first nuclear test, and that "sniffer planes" detected plutonium traces - the material North Korean weapons are said to use - and not the uranium with which Pakistani weapons are built. But cutting to what many perceive as the heart of such nuclear efforts, Pike noted: "Historically, states which have felt existential threats, states which feel they have a well-founded fear of regime change, have wanted to get the bomb." And the reasons for this are widely acknowledged.
US nuclear weapons and policy expert Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Asia Times Online: "Nuclear weapons are the only weapons in the world that could deter the US." Highlighting the validity of Cirincione's assertion, nuclear hawk C Paul Robinson, director of the US nuclear weapons complex of Sandia National Laboratories, told the National Journal: "Some people draw the lesson that the United States can be deterred by nuclear weapons, but not by chemical or biological ones. I can't argue with that conclusion."
In the same August 2003 National Journal interview, Robinson also said: "I disagree with people who infer that the NPT [nuclear non-proliferation treaty] is a real arms control treaty. It's not." By contrast, numerous US figures, including former president Jimmy Carter, are on record as both strongly endorsing the NPT and expressing strong concern regarding its future.
Between the US's "pressures" on one hand, and its treaty abrogation and avoidance on the other, administration critics believe the international structures which have limited nuclear proliferation are effectively being pulled apart.
In a now established pattern highlighting the Bush administration's commitment to its treaty obligations, it appears to have rescinded the NPT's so-called "negative assurance" to non-nuclear states, a guarantee that they would never face nuclear attack as long as they continued to renounce nuclear weaponry. And with Washington's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) initiating the pursuit of new nuclear weapons, the US has clearly violated article six of the accord - its treaty obligation to continually move towards nuclear disarmament.
As early as 2001, the Observer from Britain christened international acts in this genre as "Big dog diplomacy". But the "big dog" has even been chewing up things at home.
Notably, in a reflection of the reasons underpinning the dangerously destabilizing erosion of US international credibility, the administration appears to have both substantively misled Congress and violated domestic legislation, with a recent CRS update even citing it for this.
But prior to the CRS findings, a sharply critical January letter to the agency responsible for nuclear weapons research and production - the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) - by the chairman and ranking member of the House of Representatives sub-committee overseeing their efforts - the sub-committee on energy and water development - charged that a drive to "charge forward with unrestricted efforts on advanced nuclear weapons concepts" is ongoing, despite Congressional limitations.
The NNSA's "bunker-busting" mini-nuke project, "RNEP", then spawned subsequent and very considerable CRS attention, with a April 9 CRS update highlighting quite wide Congressional concerns. "For many members [of Congress], the five-year cost of RNEP as presented in the FY2005 budget document came as a surprise not only in the amount, but also in what appeared to be an intent contrary to legislation," the CRS wrote. Demonstrating the Congress' level of reservation, in addition to House members, both Republican and Democratic senators' concerns were quoted by CRS.
In addressing his reservations with energy secretary Spencer Abraham, CRS quoted Senator Ted Kennedy as charging: "... you're rushing ahead with the nuclear weapons, including mini-nukes and the nuclear bunker busters. I'll give you a chance to be able to explain how this program [RNEP], which was $45 million two years ago is now up to almost $.5 billion." Other legislators voiced equally strong reservations, particularly regarding the manner in which the administration has pursued the nuclear "flexibility" advocated by the NPR.
As the BBC reported in August 2003, bunker-busting bombs "would fit well with President George W Bush's preference for a preemptive strike capability". But the price of such programs includes considerably more than dollars.
Numerous international security experts have warned of the potential for a new and global nuclear arms race. The Carnegie Endowment's Cirincione warned that if "the most powerful military nation in the world says it needs nuclear weapons for its national security, why don't other countries". He warned that not only America's "enemies", but its friends would be prompted to enter the nuclear race.
Emphasizing such concerns, Brazil recently made international headlines for refusing International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors access to a new facility for uranium enrichment. Notably, during his successful campaign for office, Brazil's widely respected and much acclaimed president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, pointedly noted: "If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?" And while Brazil is not currently suspected of having a weapons program, the implications of the Bush administration's nuclear posture appear profound.
As regards Russia, executive director Daryl Kimball of the Washington-based Arms Control Association told Asia Times Online that "the US-Russian arms reduction process has, for all intents and purposes, halted". And a recent article in Izvestia quoted the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky, as warning: "We will be compelled to modify the development of our own strategic nuclear forces depending on Washington's plans."
Cirincione saw the administration's plans in terms of expanding militarism, saying: "They place their faith in maximizing US military strength, not in establishing international law or international norms", noting this was despite US interests lying in the firm establishment of both. Spain's new premier, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, had previously emphasized the same point, saying: "Terrorism is combated by the state of law ... That's what I think Europe and the international community have to debate." But some experts believe another kind of debate may be on the administration's agenda.
On April 6, the Wall Street Journal editorialized: "If warnings to Tehran from Washington don't impress them, perhaps some cruise missiles aimed at the Busheir nuclear site will." Concerns that Iran may have acquired the plans for a nuclear device appear to provide the true rationale behind such headlines, particularly as Iran is building a large uranium enrichment plant before it has reactors which could utilize that plant's nuclear fuel.
IAEA inspectors are reported to have questioned this sequence. And speculation exists that a US or Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear-related targets is possible in an effort to delay Iran's potential acquisition of sufficient fissile material for a weapon's construction. But Global Security's Pike noted that the difficulty in striking the most significant extent of any clandestine program would make such an effort ill advised. And the substantive political implications also argue against such a precipitous move; yet, some analysts have expressed concern.
Though a number of observers believe Iran may well be in the process of going nuclear, the majority believe any Iranian weapon would be for defensive purposes. "Clearly Iran's motivation is not to obliterate Israel, but to limit the ability of the US, or any foreign power, from coercing them," nuclear expert Christopher Paine of the Natural Resources Defense Council told Asia Times Online. But even defensive weapons could have implications.
Saudi Arabia is said to have helped fund Pakistan's nuclear program through discounts on its oil shipments. And according to Pike, "probably every even-numbered Pakistani bomb has a little sticker on it saying 'property of Saudi Arabia'," with the less than jocular implication being that should Iran go nuclear, the Saudis would do so simultaneously, long-standing differences between the two states spawning the move. Pike pointedly mentioned that Egypt would then want to join "the club", and a deadly regional nuclear arms race would be on. Pike noted that a similar situation exists in Asia, with North Korean weapons providing the seeds for an equally disturbing scenario there.
While it is widely acknowledged that US "pressures" have precipitated the current global volatility, many observers look to the November US elections, hoping for American "regime change" as the best avenue for renewed world stability.
Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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South Korea and Japan Reaching Out to North Korea
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A25
SEOUL -- Top U.S. allies in Asia are opening new lines of communication with North Korea, seeking direct dialogue on a host of sensitive issues such as nuclear proliferation, even as the Bush administration continues to reject broad engagement.
The South Korean and Japanese governments reacted with new urgency, analysts said, after U.S. intelligence indicated that North Korea had built up an arsenal of at least eight nuclear devices over the past 20 months.
Two rounds of disarmament talks in Beijing involving high-level delegations from the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea have failed to produce results. With North Korea and the United States at loggerheads, the negotiations have devolved into mid-level working group talks set to begin Wednesday, leaving few observers optimistic of a quick breakthrough.
As a result, South Korea and Japan -- which lie within easy range of North Korean missiles -- are engaging North Korea independently. President Bush, in contrast, has branded North Korea a member of the "axis of evil," rejecting bilateral talks with the government of Kim Jong Il.
South Korea, whose policy of rapprochement has brought unprecedented contacts with the North since the late 1990s, is pushing for more and better dialogue. Officials in Seoul, frustrated with the deadlocked multilateral talks, are convinced the North Koreans need to "be drawn out into trusting us," one official in Seoul said. During the last round of six-nation talks in Beijing, South Korean officials proposed to their North Korean counterparts that they open bilateral channels of communication on the nuclear issue.
"The biggest point with the North Koreans now, whether in dealing with the nuclear or other issues, is establishing trust," said a South Korean official familiar with the talks. "If they don't trust us or the United States, they will be less willing to reach an agreement. That is where dialogue comes in. We need to establish trust through more communication, not less."
In Washington, a Bush administration official said both South Korea and Japan had their own reasons for dealing directly with North Korea. "I think we're not too far out of line here," he said, noting there would be "tremendous opportunities" for direct meetings between U.S. and North Korean officials at the working-group talks. "I think there is enough opportunity for dialogue. We don't think that has been a major obstacle to moving on."
Improved North-South communications can already be seen in photos of South Korea's unification minister, Jeong Se Hyun, shaking hands with his counterparts in Pyongyang this week. The South Korean decision to dispatch a cabinet-level delegation for four days of talks on security issues -- the second such meeting this year -- resulted in a key breakthrough. North Korea's typically surly military agreed to hold a rare meeting between top generals from North and South on defense issues, perhaps this month.
Japan last week dispatched a high-level team to Beijing to meet with North Korean officials. Although the nuclear issue was reportedly raised, the meeting focused on Japan's demands for the return of family members of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Koreans and held in spy training camps during the 1970s and 1980s. Two years ago, North Korea allowed five Japanese citizens to return home and admitted they had been abducted, but it kept eight close family members -- including children -- in North Korea.
Japan and North Korea have been at bitter odds over their return, but Japanese officials described the North Koreans as showing a new willingness to cooperate during this week's talks. One Japanese official who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the negotiations said Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi "is prepared to do whatever it takes" to secure the return of the family members.
That includes, the official said, the possibility of jump-starting now-frozen talks to normalize relations with North Korea. Koizumi is reportedly prepared to fly to Pyongyang to receive the detainees if the North Koreans give them up -- an event that would mark Koizumi's first official visit there since his historic summit with Kim in September 2002.
The overtures by South Korea and Japan underscore the divergent opinions held by the three allies on how to handle North Korea.
South Korea, in particular, has called on the U.S. government to show "more flexibility" to resolve the nuclear crisis. The Bush administration has insisted on a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. But U.S. officials have been "vague," according to one South Korean government source familiar with the talks, on the eventual rewards the North can expect if it complies.
North Korea has a plutonium reactor and appears to have recently reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. North Korea told U.S. diplomats two years ago that it had a uranium enrichment program but has since denied the program's existence.
Analysts see Japanese and South Korean engagement of the North in two possible lights. On the one hand, the increased dialogue may turn into a useful, if indirect, channel for U.S. officials to hash out thorny issues and could help pave the way for a disarmament agreement.
But analysts warn there is also a risk that North Korea may succeed in what many see as its primary strategic goal: to drive a wedge between the United States and its key Asian allies.
The Japanese, for instance, share the Bush administration's hard line on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But analysts say a decision by North Korea to return the relatives of the kidnapped Japanese citizens could be calculated to soften Tokyo's resolve.
It could also be pragmatic. The Japanese government is likely to be called upon to offer massive economic aid to North Korea if it dismantled its nuclear programs. But the Japanese have said they would not offer any aid until North Korea resolved the issue of the family members.
The United States, Japan and South Korea are allies "in the same bed but with different dreams," said Hideshi Takesada, professor at Tokyo's National Institute for Defense Studies. "Japan and the U.S. are united, but there is a gap between those two countries and South Korea," he said. "North Korea has already succeeded in drawing South Korea to the North's side. . . . Now it's trying aggressively to hammer a wedge between Bush and Koizumi."
Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondent Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo contributed to this report.
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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China Warns Hong Kong Legislators to Halt Debate on Elections
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A15
BEIJING, May 8 -- China warned Saturday that pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong are violating the law by proposing legislative resolutions criticizing the government's refusal to allow the territory to choose its leaders in direct elections.
The warning, from the government's liaison office in Hong Kong, marked the first time Beijing has sought to limit discussion in Hong Kong's Legislative Council since the former British colony reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Attributed to an unnamed senior official, the statement was the latest step in a government campaign seeking to end debate on its April 26 decision to bar direct elections for Hong Kong's chief executive in 2007 and the full legislature in 2008.
"The official says any move by Legislative Councilors in Hong Kong to advance motions to voice 'discontent' or 'condemn' the April 26 decision by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress over Hong Kong's constitutional development is against the law as well as the constitution," the statement said. "He says the moves do not accord with the Legislative Council's constitutional status as a local legislature and go beyond the limit of its duty and authority."
The statement, issued late Friday night in Hong Kong and relayed Saturday by the official New China News Agency, came in response to attempts by members of the Legislative Council to pass a resolution condemning the Beijing government and another expressing regret at its decision not to allow expanded voting.
Both motions have been blocked by the Legislative Council president, Rita Fan, on grounds they violate the Basic Law, negotiated between China and departing British officials, which outlines the "one country, two systems" arrangement for Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong.
Yeung Sum, chairman of the Democracy Party, told Hong Kong reporters that Fan's rulings in support of Beijing's views amount to restrictions on freedom of speech in the Legislative Council.
The first motion was introduced a week ago by Martin Lee, a leading pro-democracy legislator. It called on the Legislative Council to "strongly condemn" the April 26 decision by Beijing.
After Lee's motion was blocked, another pro-democracy legislator, Albert Ho, introduced a motion accusing Beijing of violating the Basic Law by infringing on the one-country, two systems arrangement that was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy. In addition, it expressed "regret and discontent" at the April 26 decision.
With their motions stymied, pro-democracy activists had called a meeting for Monday to decide the next step in the confrontation. Legislators said they could introduce a third, softer resolution in hopes it would be allowed to come to a vote. If Fan remained firm, they could take the rulings to court seeking to have them overturned.
But Beijing's tough statement appeared designed as a warning that the debate had gone on long enough. The pro-democracy lawmakers are not entitled to voice any criticism of central government decisions through legislative resolutions, the Chinese government said, adding that the April 26 decision was "an important legal document" that "cannot be questioned or challenged."
Audrey Eu, one of 24 elected members in the 60-seat legislature, suggested Beijing's warning, if heeded, would rob the body of its oversight function. "The move implies that Legislative Councilors cannot speak freely, and how could you expect us to speak for the people, to monitor the government?" she said.
"It is not in the interest of Hong Kong's society," said Edward Chan, chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association.
Chinese authorities and their followers in Hong Kong have suggested repeatedly that the debate over political reform in Hong Kong should wane now that Beijing has spoken. Premier Wen Jiabao said during a recent visit to Europe that the April 26 decision did not rule out direct elections forever, only for now. But the message in Hong Kong has been that it is time to move on.
Chinese officials and like-minded Hong Kong officials have put forward two reasons for delaying the expansion of Hong Kong's voting rights. First, they suggest that moving swiftly toward full democracy could destabilize the territory and endanger its economic well-being. Second, they say that those who push for full democratic rights are not patriotic Chinese citizens but are following a U.S. or British agenda.
Special correspondent K.C. Ng in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Pakistan's Uneasy Role in Terror War
Conciliatory Approach to Tribal and Foreign Fighters Leaves U.S. Officials Frustrated
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 8, 2004; Page A08
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 7 -- It was a cinematic moment, heavy with symbolism. In the courtyard of a village Islamic school, uniformed army officers greeted tribal fighters wearing enormous turbans and bandoliers. Rusty rifles and swords were ceremonially presented, and the former adversaries embraced.
But the April 24 meeting, which formally ended a bloody month-long conflict between Pakistani troops and Islamic militants in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, also signaled a setback for Pakistan's campaign to clear al Qaeda and Taliban operatives out of its border areas. And it underscored persistent contradictions between Pakistani and U.S. priorities despite the two governments' alliance against terrorism.
More than 21/2 years after the United States launched military operations in Afghanistan, U.S. officials continue to describe the threat from revived Taliban and al Qaeda forces there as an urgent and overriding concern. There are constant reports of armed attacks on military or civilian targets in several Afghan provinces along the Pakistani border, and extremist groups have vowed to intensify assaults before the Afghan national elections, which are scheduled for September.
While U.S. and Afghan forces pursue their quarry on the Afghan side of the border, they rely on Pakistan to take on guerrillas who have found refuge on the other side. From Washington's perspective, Pakistan's aborted military mission in the tribal area of South Waziristan was a job half done.
A series of raids in March ended with more than 120 people dead but did not result in the capture or killing of any senior Taliban or al Qaeda figure believed to be sheltered in the rugged, semi-autonomous region. Instead, the mission ended in a settlement that offered amnesty to foreign and tribal fighters who had fiercely resisted the raids, including one local leader who this week pledged loyalty to the Taliban and an anti-Western holy war.
On Monday, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, called on Pakistan to renew its military operations in the defiant tribal regions. Criticizing Pakistan's conciliatory approach, he said that "there are foreign fighters in those tribal areas who will have to be killed or captured."
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, has made similar critical remarks, expressing disappointment and impatience with Pakistan's performance. So far, U.S. officials noted, not a single foreign fighter has come forward to register under Pakistan's amnesty, though officials have twice extended the deadline for them to surrender or face military action. Last week, the cutoff date was extended to May 8.
Pakistani authorities have bristled at the American criticism, saying they remain determined to uproot Islamic terrorism but must balance the concerns of their allies with the need to respect public opinion and keep the peace at home.
"We are committed to the war on terror and we will pursue it to the end," said a senior government official. "We have a well-thought-out operational and political strategy. We need American support, but we are also sensitive to public opinion, and we do not want to add fuel to the extremists.
"It's a tricky situation, and we must be nimble," he added. "If we don't take care of our domestic constituents, we cannot deliver to the Americans either."
Pakistan is an impoverished Muslim country of 150 million people, rife with religious passions and bristling with weapons. Many Pakistanis are obsessed with national sovereignty and suspicious of Western motives; some adhere to radical interpretations of Islam and oppose efforts to modernize society. Tribesmen are especially protective of their autonomy and traditional way of life.
The agreement that was sealed at the April meeting in South Waziristan may have rewarded a group the government had vowed to punish for harboring foreign terrorists, but analysts say it also averted a wider clash with restive tribesmen, a potential split in the army and a backlash by the country's militant Islamic movement.
"The compromise was an acknowledgment of brutal reality," said Rifaat Hussain, an expert on Pakistani defense issues. "The government wanted to win international credibility, but it could not go too far without risking domestic opposition and possibly provoking a local war. The overriding goal became not to open another front and antagonize the tribal areas -- even at the price of international criticism."
A similar balancing act has blunted many of the initiatives promoted by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, since he seized power in October 1999. He frequently has been forced to scale back or even abandon ambitious reform efforts, backed by Western governments, after encountering strong resistance from political, religious or economic groups at home.
But the dilemma has been sharpest when it comes to the war on terrorism, to which Musharraf has repeatedly committed his government since the Bush administration first demanded his support after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Musharraf's decision to back the U.S.-led effort abruptly put the Pakistani government, which supported not only the Taliban but also a handful of Muslim guerrilla groups fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, at odds with many powerful segments of society.
This week, for example, while U.S. officials were expressing concern that Pakistan had backed off in the border region, the Pakistani parliament erupted in indignation at the news that a handful of U.S. troops had briefly strayed across the poorly marked border from southeastern Afghanistan.
"There is not a single Pakistani who accepts the intrusion of a single foreign soldier on Pakistani soil," said Aitzaz Ahsan, a lawyer and legislator of the opposition Pakistan People's Party in parliament. He said the government must balance the need to combat terrorism with respect for due process, national sovereignty and domestic traditions, including the laws that limit state intervention in the tribal areas.
"We cannot countenance that foreign elements take refuge in Pakistan to destabilize Afghanistan or any other country, but we also cannot countenance a paramilitary operation that ignores the political system and brutalizes the human rights of Pakistani citizens," Ahsan said. "No one wants foreign elements in Pakistan, but this problem cannot be left to the military alone."
Pakistan's religious parties, whose influence has grown dramatically in recent years and who now wield significant power in several provinces and the national legislature, have been far harsher, repeatedly branding Musharraf as a Western lackey.
Under the April 24 agreement, five tribal guerrilla leaders received full amnesties in return for agreeing to lay down their weapons. Foreign guerrillas were allowed to remain in the tribal areas as long as they agreed to live peacefully and register with the government.
This week Naik Mohammed, 28, one of the tribal leaders, received local journalists in his village. He denied harboring any fighters from other countries, but he described himself as an Islamic holy warrior and said he had fought alongside the Taliban in the past.
Within Pakistan, reaction to the agreement has been mixed. Numerous critics said that while it temporarily pacified the tribal region, it also may have emboldened such troublemakers as Mohammed and set back efforts to reform the governance of tribal areas, which have traditionally been havens for crime, smuggling, violence and primitive forms of justice.
Some, however, saw the agreement as something more portentous: a tactical retreat from an anti-terrorist policy that government critics say could lead to further military intervention in Pakistani politics.
"The Americans are using Pakistan, and what their officials in Kabul are asking of us is the road to suicide," said Sen. Khursheed Ahmad, an Islamic scholar and member of the country's largest Islamic party. "We do not condone terrorism, but the Americans are trying to persuade us to kill our own people. If the war on terror leads the army to carve out an institutional role in politics, it will be bad for Pakistan and bad for America too."
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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The Best of Bad Choices
Given the Iraq War's mounting costs and impossible goals, America should transfer sovereignty and come home.
By Christopher Layne
The administration's Iraq policy is in shambles. Iraq has become a geopolitical humpty-dumpty that America cannot put back together, and the time has come for the United States to withdraw.
We now face a full-blown uprising against the occupation of Iraq. Events plainly belie the administration's spin that order will soon be restored and that the revolt is just the work of a few Iraqi extremists and a handful of terrorists from other Middle Eastern states. Even top officials in the British government--America's most loyal ally--understand that the administration's take on Iraq is divorced from reality. As British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said, "The lid on the pressure cooker has come off. There is no doubt that the current situation is very serious and it is the most serious we have faced. It plainly is the fact today that there are larger numbers of people, and they are people on the ground, Iraqis, not foreign fighters, who are engaged in this insurgency." Americans should not allow the administration's "perception management" campaign--a fancy bureaucratic term for lying--to pull the wool over their eyes.
From a policy standpoint, an even greater concern is that the administration believes its own disinformation about events in Iraq. But there are three disturbing facts about the insurrection that cannot be swept under the rug. First, what began as a small-scale insurgency mounted by Sunni "dead-enders" and "former regime elements" now has morphed into a broad-based popular rebellion joined by large numbers of Shi'ites. The Shi'ite revolt is especially troubling because--to the extent that the Bush II administration had any strategy at all for administering postwar Iraq--it was based on the assumption that the United States could co-opt the Shi'ites and gain their support for Washington's plans to create a "democratic" Iraq. Second, Iraq's Sunnis and Shi'ites --heretofore deeply antagonistic to each other--now are finding common ground in resisting the occupation. Here U.S. policy seems to be having a bitterly ironic and quite unintended consequence. Previously, Iraq, which Britain artificially cobbled together from the Ottoman Empire's wreckage, lacked a sense of national identity. Now, however, resentment of the American occupation is creating an Iraqi nationalism shared by Sunnis and Shi'ites. Third, outrage at America's heavy-handed use of military power to suppress the uprising has alienated the very Iraqis Washington has counted upon to form the core of a new government to which "sovereignty" can be transferred. Although they were handpicked by U.S. officials, leading members of the Iraqi Governing Council now are condemning American policy and distancing themselves from Washington.
Where does U.S. policy go from here? There are three options: internationalizing the occupation, increasing U.S. troop strength and cracking down hard on the insurgency, or withdrawal.
Internationalizing the occupation by bringing in the UN and/or NATO is a non-starter--pure political grandstanding. First, Iraq now is so dangerous and chaotic it is doubtful that the UN wants to step in and take responsibility for trying to fix things. Second, for the same reasons, other nations are not going to rush in and send troops to restore order in Iraq. Indeed, it now is apparent that others are concluding that their best option is staying out--or, if they already have troops there, getting out--of Iraq. Third, although some individual NATO members have token contingents in Iraq, the alliance has its hands full in Afghanistan (and the Europeans are stretched to the breaking point by their non-NATO Balkan and West African peacekeeping commitments). NATO just doesn't have more troops that it can send to help the U.S. in Iraq.
There is another reason internationalization cannot be a real option as long as the Bush II administration remains in office. Even if the UN agreed to step in, it would do so only if Washington agreed to give the international community real decision-making authority in Iraq. The Bush administration will not do this because giving up control over Iraq would be tantamount to abandoning the very goals for which it went to war in the first place: using Iraq as a platform for establishing American military dominance in the Persian Gulf; transforming Iraq into a dependable, oil-supplying client state; and using Iraq as the launching pad for the proposed "democratic transformation" of the entire Middle East.
Increasing American troop levels and suppressing the insurgency is not a viable option, either. Although the U.S. has enough firepower to dampen down the insurrection--at least for a while--this would be a self-defeating policy because there no longer is a military solution in Iraq. There is a good reason --to quote the title of Andrew Mack's important article that appeared some years ago in the journal World Politics--big states lose small wars.
Insurgencies start small but gain widespread political support by driving a wedge between the civilian population and the occupation forces. Here, insurgents count on the occupation forces to be their unwitting accomplices. When the occupying forces resort to violent and coercive measures, they lose politically by alienating the population. As events in Fallujah and elsewhere demonstrate, such tactics fan widespread popular anger and resentment. Regardless of what happens in Iraq in the next several weeks, a watershed has been reached. Iraq's population is seething and hostile, and if the United States stays on in Iraq, henceforth it will face broad-based political, and armed, resistance to the occupation. In that setting, the U.S. will confront the asymmetry in motivation that causes big states to lose small wars; the Iraqis are fighting for their country, but the United States is fighting for goals that are ephemeral.
Contrary to what Mr. Bush has said, the growing numbers of Iraqis supporting the insurgency do not "hate freedom." It is just that they define "freedom" as freedom from American rule. Now, in this regard, the administration hopes it can placate Iraqi nationalism by handing over "sovereignty" on June 30. But Iraqis are not fooled by this, and Americans shouldn't be either. As things now stand, Iraq will be sovereign in name only because the U.S. will still be wielding military, economic, and political control in Baghdad.
The administration has dug a hole in Iraq. It is time to stopping digging deeper. The war was a tragic, avoidable mistake, and those who opposed it have been vindicated. The administration should be held accountable, both for leading the nation in war under false pretenses and for its willful failure to think through the consequences of going to war with Iraq. As James Fallows recently pointed out in the Atlantic, the administration was warned about many things. It was warned by the then-Army Chief of Staff that stabilizing postwar Iraq would require the long-term commitment of several hundred thousand U.S. troops. It was warned by the Army War College that if American forces remained in postwar Iraq for any length of time, they would soon cease to be viewed as liberators and be seen instead as a hostile occupation army. And it was warned that Iraq was a singularly poor candidate for a "democracy transplant" because it lacked the essential prerequisites for a successful democratic transition. (And if by some chance the U.S. did transplant democracy to Iraq, we would rue the day. A democratic Iraq would be virulently anti-American and anti-Israeli.) The administration turned a deaf ear to these warnings because it considered them to be "antiwar"--that is, undermining its already decided-upon policy of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. And, of course, the administration was correct: these warnings did cut the legs from underneath its case for going to war because they demonstrated that the administration's policy would lead the U.S. into an Iraqi quagmire.
Of course, it can be said that all this is true but is just water under the bridge: we are in Iraq now, and it is "defeatist" to suggest that the United States "cut and run." There are arguments that can be marshaled to support continuing American involvement, but they are not very convincing. And if they are accepted, it will mean that the U.S. has to stay in Iraq for a long, long time no matter what the cost in lives and treasure--and even though there is scant prospect of ultimate success.
First, some will claim that if the U.S. withdraws Iraq will fall into chaos. Of course, the U.S. has been in Iraq for a year and that country is in chaos. Second, it might be claimed that if America withdraws Iraq will become a terrorist haven. But the truth is that the longer the United States stays in Iraq, the more that country will become a magnet for Islamic fighters who want to take us on. Staying the course will not make things better, because America's bloody suppression of the current uprising not only is alienating many Iraqis who were--up to now--acquiescing in the occupation (however reluctantly) but also is stirring up anti-Americanism and creating more terrorism throughout the Middle East. Third, it is said that if America fails to prevail in Iraq, our enemies--not just in the Middle East, but worldwide--will doubt U.S. resolve and will be tempted to challenge the United States in future crises. Well, the same arguments were made against withdrawing from Vietnam. But the United States withdrew from Vietnam, and it survived to triumph in the Cold War: the dominoes did not topple, America's world position did not crumble, and neither its allies nor its adversaries questioned Washington's determination to defend vital U.S. interests.
There is a more heart-wrenching argument against U.S. withdrawal: how can we justify the loss of American lives to the parents of those military personnel who have been killed in Iraq? The real question, however, is how many more parents do we wish to send into mourning. The argument about sunk costs--whether in lives, in wounded (some 3,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in Iraq, many grievously), or dollars (some $121 billion in 2003 and another estimated $50-75 billion this year)--can always be invoked to stick with a failed policy. But staying the course--continuing to pay these costs in pursuit of policy objectives that cannot be attained--is not the answer. Instead of compounding our losses in Iraq, we should be cutting them.
The United States has no good options in Iraq but the least bad is this: Washington should transfer real sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30. It should tell the Iraqis to work out their own political future among themselves and turn over full responsibility for Iraq's external and internal security to the new regime in Baghdad. Simultaneously, the United States also should suspend all offensive military operations in Iraq, pull its forces back to defensive enclaves well away from Iraq's cities, and commence a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq that will be completed on December 31 (or on January 20, 2005).
There is no point in being Pollyannaish. In the long run, the U.S. will be better off leaving Iraq. In the short-term, however, there will be consequences--not all of which are foreseeable--if the U.S. withdraws. But that misses the point. Sooner or later the U.S. is going to end up leaving Iraq without having attained its goals. Washington's real choice is akin to that posed in an old oil-filter commercial that used to run on television: America can pay now, or it can pay later when the costs will be even higher.
Some 45 years ago, France found itself involved in a conflict very much like that in which the U.S. is involved in Iraq. Algeria was a bitter, bloody, and interminable struggle. The French could not prevail but were unwilling to bow to reality. Charles de Gaulle--a statesman of great vision and courage--cut the Gordian knot and extricated France from the unwinnable war in Algeria. Although painful, it was the right decision. George W. Bush is no de Gaulle. He is incapable either of admitting that his administration blundered into Iraq or of cutting America's losses and disengaging. Whether any other political leader in the U.S. is capable of stepping up to the plate and demonstrating de Gaulle-like wisdom--which might require admitting to having made a misjudgment in initially backing the decision to go to war--remains to be seen. But plainly, the time has come for a statesman to step forward and ask the American people the question that must be asked: if the United States remains in Iraq, how do we tell the U.S. troops there that one of them will be the last one to die for a mistake?
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Christopher Layne, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and a Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, writes frequently about American and international politics.
May 10, 2004 issue
Copyright ? 2004 The American Conservative
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Iraq through a rear-view mirror
By Paul Greenberg
Slowly, painfully slowly, after a long and increasingly bloody year, a hard truth dawns on American policymakers:
A New and Democratic Iraq cannot be created simply by repeating that phrase. There can be no new Iraq unless it is rooted in the old, or it will be swept away by the first wind out of the desert.
To quote some wisdom out of the East: Where there is no vision, the people perish. Democracy may be a grand vision, but where there is no appreciation of the realities, it is vision that perishes. And nowhere can visions be more dangerous and deluding than in the desert, where wishes may create cruel mirages. Especially to foreign eyes.
Looking at Iraq a year after the formal war ended while the informal, decisive one continues, there is no listing all the multiple mistakes made there, but some stand out like a mountain range, casting long shadows:
* It becomes clearer as the Rumsfeldian mirages are dispelled that the old Iraqi army should not have been disbanded but reformed under rehabilitatable leaders.
By dissolving the Iraqi army, the occupying authorities in one brilliant stroke assured high unemployment, created a critical mass of injured pride and deep resentment in the Iraqi population, and loosed bands of well-armed freebooters to roam the country -- much like the German Freikorps that bedeviled the Weimar Republic after the collapse of the Kaiser's Empire at the end of the First World War in 1918.
* Order should have been more strictly imposed -- instead of violence being tolerated in the name of freedom. Our own Gen. John Shinfeki had warned it might take some 200,000 American troops to occupy Iraq. At the time he may have seemed alarmist to the civilians running the Pentagon like any other high-tech, low-manpower, outsourcing corporation; now he seems prophetic.
* Established religious leaders should have been given greater sway, imported secular ones held in check. Democracy should have been given room to develop in accordance with the culture, not pitted against its Islamic basis.
Next to these massive misjudgments, American successes may not be the stuff of headlines, but they are just as real and impressive -- from a remarkably successful three-week military campaign a year ago to the peace and progress that generally reigns in Kurdish territory. Freedom of the press, individual rights, the liberation of Iraqi women ... all are signal contributions to this new-old Iraq.
But it is the mistakes that stand out in hindsight (they always do) and are brought home with every casualty report. Yet in hindsight it also becomes clearer the greatest mistake of all would have been to allow Saddam Hussein to stay in power, and to think/hope we could somehow contain his mad plans without a showdown at some point. The sooner it came, the better for America and the world.
The various weapons programs David Kay found in Iraq after the formal war there had been concluded, even if they had not yet produced weapons, needed to be stopped while they were still programs, not assembly lines. As George W. Bush observed soon after September 11, time was not on our side.
As for John Kerry, he has not yet made the mother of all mistakes; he still gives at least lip service to staying the course in Iraq, though it is clear he also hopes to appeal to the isolationist impulse at the core of the American psyche.
The senator who would be president has his own litany of empty phrases that on examination will not stand up any better than the superficial talk of a New and Democratic Iraq: He speaks loosely of recruiting NATO to supplant American forces, by which he means France and Germany -- the same powers that frustrated any real attempt to confront Saddam Hussein in the first place.
Mr. Kerry speaks just as loosely about relying on the United Nations, the same outfit that originated the oil-for-palaces program that enriched not just Saddam Hussein but the U.N. itself -- and maybe some high-ranking U.N. officials personally. (The investigation is only starting, and may still get sidetracked.)
Both NATO and the U.N. may provide useful diplomatic cover, but, please, let us not replace old delusions with new ones. Peace and freedom depend, as they have for the better part of a century now, on the power and perseverance of America, and the steadfastness of American public opinion. Make no mistake: If our national unity goes, so will American security. Among all the new lessons to be learned, an old one needs to be kept in mind: Divided we fall.
Paul Greenberg is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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Soldier: Role was to 'make it hell' for prisoners
Reservist tells of orders from intelligence officers
An undated family handout photo obtained by the Washington Post shows Army Specialist Sabrina D. Harman with a young Iraqi boy in Al Hillah., Iraq. Harman is among those charged with abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
By Jackie Spinner
Updated: 11:45 p.m. ET May 07, 2004There were no rules, by her account, and there was little training. But the mission was clear. Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, a military police officer who has been charged with abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said she was assigned to break down prisoners for interrogation.
"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," Harman said by e-mail this week from Baghdad. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."
Harman, one of seven military police reservists charged in the abuse of detainees at the prison, is the second of those soldiers to speak publicly about her time at Abu Ghraib, and her comments echo findings of the Army's investigation into prisoner abuse there. That probe documented the maltreatment of detainees and found the prison was chaotically run, that there were no apparent rules governing interrogations and that Harman's military police unit was ill trained for the job it was asked to perform.
* Special reports: Military
Harman, a 26-year-old Army reservist from Alexandria, said members of her military police unit took direction from Army military intelligence officers, from CIA operatives and from civilian contractors who conducted interrogations. She did not discuss abusive treatment of prisoners or clarify who specifically ordered such treatment, and she referred questions about the charges against her to her attorney, who declined to comment.
Her face is now famous as belonging to one of two soldiers posing in the widely published photograph of naked Iraqi detainees stacked in a pyramid. The picture is one of several that have inflamed the Arab world and brought condemnation from President Bush and other U.S. political and military leaders.
Harman is accused by the Army of taking photographs of that pyramid and photographing and videotaping detainees who were ordered to strip and masturbate in front of other prisoners and soldiers, according to a charge sheet obtained by The Washington Post. She is also charged with photographing a corpse and then posing for a picture with it; with striking several prisoners by jumping on them as they lay in a pile; with writing "rapeist" on a prisoner's leg; and with attaching wires to a prisoner's hands while he stood on a box with his head covered. She told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box, the documents said.
The New Yorker via AP
Harman is among the soldiers who posed with Iraqi detainees. She is accused by the Army of videotaping prisoners who were ordered to strip.
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Private employees as interrogators
In her e-mails, Harman said detainees would be handed over to her military police unit by Army intelligence officers, by CIA operatives or by the contractors. The Army probe into Abu Ghraib said the U.S. government used employees of private companies as interrogators and interpreters along with intelligence officers. Two of the civilian contractors are under investigation in connection with the abuses.
Prisoners were stripped, searched and then "made to stand or kneel for hours," Harman said. Sometimes they were forced to stand on boxes or hold boxes or to exercise to tire them out, she said.
"The person who brought them in would set the standards on whether or not to 'be nice,' " she said. "If the prisoner was cooperating, then the prisoner was able to keep his jumpsuit, mattress, and was allowed cigarettes on request or even hot food. But if the prisoner didn't give what they wanted, it was all taken away until [military intelligence] decided. Sleep, food, clothes, mattresses, cigarettes were all privileges and were granted with information received."
She said the prison had no standard operating procedures and on Tier 1A, where suspected insurgents were held, Army and other intelligence officers "made the rules as they went."
Harman joined the Army as a reservist in 2001, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She was assigned to the 372nd, based in Cresaptown, Md. The company was called up for duty in February of last year and deployed to Fort Lee, Va., for three months before heading to Iraq.
Harman, an assistant manager at a Papa John's Pizza in Fairfax County before being sent to Iraq, said the company received additional training at Fort Lee, but it was for "combat support, not I/R," the military term for internment and resettlement. She said she was never schooled in the Geneva Conventions' rules on prisoner treatment.
"The Geneva Convention was never posted, and none of us remember taking a class to review it," Harman said. "The first time reading it was two months after being charged. I read the entire thing highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There's a lot."
'They're passing the buck'
In the Army report on conditions at the prison, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba said that "soldiers were poorly prepared and untrained to conduct I/R operations prior to deployment, at the mobilization site, upon arrival in theater and throughout their mission."
The Army has launched several investigations into the abuse and has notified seven officers and sergeants that they will receive letters of reprimand or admonishment that could end their careers.
Harman is charged with conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, making a false statement, and assault. She faces an Article 32 hearing tentatively set in June, the military equivalent of a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to convene a court-martial.
In his investigation, Taguba used a portion of Harman's sworn statement to conclude that prisoners had been abused. Harman "stated . . . regarding the incident where a detainee was placed on box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis, 'that her job was to keep detainees awake.' "
The other soldiers charged with abuse are Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, Sgt. Javal S. Davis, Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, Spec. Megan M. Ambuhl and Pfc. Lynndie R. England. England was charged yesterday.
Harman's mother, Robin Harman, said her daughter would never hurt anyone.
"She has this . . . attitude that she is going to save the world," said Robin Harman, who lives in Northern Virginia. "She got over there and got an eye-opener. You don't put unqualified kids in that situation."
Yesterday, as Robin Harman watched Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld testify, she called her daughter a "scapegoat." "They're passing the buck, putting it all on the little kids," she said. "That's what makes me so mad."
Harman took many photographs while in Iraq, her family said.
Evidence of improper conditions
Among hundreds of digital pictures passed around her MP unit -- and obtained by The Post -- is one taken before the soldiers got to Abu Ghraib in October. In it, Harman is smiling, crouching slightly, a thumb up, and leaning toward a blackened, decaying corpse with long fingers and a gaping mouth.
The photo was taken at a makeshift combat morgue in Al Hillah, her family said, citing letters that Harman sent with the picture.
Sabrina Harman grew up around photographs of dead people, her family explained. Her father was a homicide detective, and her mother was a forensics buff. Robin Harman said her husband often brought home crime-scene photographs for the family to "profile."
"She has been looking at autopsies and crime-scene pictures since she was a kid," her mother said. "At 7 or 8, she could spot things I'd miss."
Shortly after Harman got to Abu Ghraib in October, her mother said, she began to take and collect pictures as evidence of the improper conditions.
Robin Harman said when her daughter told her what she was doing, she ordered her to stop. "We got into an argument about it at 4 a.m.," Robin Harman said. "Sabrina said she had to prove this. I told her to bring the pictures home, hide them and stay out of it."
Sabrina Harman brought the photographs home to Virginia in mid-November during a two-week leave. An Army investigator showed up on Jan. 16 and took a CD of photos and Harman's laptop computer, her roommate said.
In February, the Army moved Harman to Camp Victory, a base of trailers and tents near Baghdad's airport. Her weapon was confiscated, but she is not in confinement. She spends her days sweeping streets and planting flowers, her family said.
Robin Harman said her daughter had dreamed of following her father into a career as a homicide detective. Now she does not want to have anything to do with law enforcement, Robin Harman said.
"She just moved out two years ago," Robin Harman said. "She has no clue what people are really like. She thinks everyone is good."
? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Little Red Corvette
Do the pictures of John Kerry in his Lycra cycling suit make you wonder if he's running for the right reasons?
by Hugh Hewitt
05/06/2004 12:00:00 AM
WHEN JOHN KERRY took a spill from his bike this past weekend, it triggered thoughts of Jimmy Carter's collapse in a road race, Gerald Ford's much-mocked stumbles, and of Kerry's own misadventures on the ski slopes earlier this year. But it wasn't until the pictures of Kerry on his bike appeared that the real damage was done. The electric-lemon Lycra look probably won't play well outside the metrosexual caucus, and it can't be particularly inspiring to the troops living in holes outside of Falluja. Presidents can golf, and they can run, but they can't get dandied up and dart around on bikes in tights and fluorescent helmets.
Kerry's obsessive, if ill-fated, displays of physical activity also raise issues other than decorum. I've seen this sort of behavior before in men of a certain age, usually from their early 50s to their early 60s. And then the thought stuck: Are John Kerry's presidential ambitions and the shape and images of his campaign more about a mid-life crisis writ very large than any underlying set of ideas?
First, note that there aren't a lot of ideas over at Kerry Central, other than the U.N. blathering which, in the aftermath of oil-for-food-for-cash-for-Kofi's-friends, doesn't even persuade United Nations employees anymore. And Kerry's paper thin record of Senate accomplishments over two decades doesn't provide us with a reason for his running either.
So who's to say that it all isn't just an effort to head-off old age via the biggest sideshow of them all.
There are warning signs of mid-life crisis. At least a couple of these--excessive time spent on personal appearance and the constant reminiscing about one's youth--seem spot-on in the context of Kerry. And the big gun experts on male mid-life melt-down, such as Jim Conway, author of Men in Midlife Crisis, warn that some candidates for mid-life crisis "seem to have a lot of power, leadership, and ability, yet many of them express great insecurity, and feeling worthless." Kerry may be hiding a lot of angst behind his fa?ade of lift-tickets and SUVs and his Shrumian rhetoric.
Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Carter arrived in the White House before the age when the mid-life demons descend, and President Reagan and candidate Dole had passed the age of such smash-ups.
But Kerry's definitely in the danger zone. Maybe those Lycra shorts are just a cry for help. Maybe he needs help. Maybe what the Kerry campaign really needs is a red corvette.
Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard. His new book, In, But Not Of, has just been published by Thomas Nelson.
? Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
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HOW TO END-RUN KOFI'S COVERUP
May 6, 2004 -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan talks grandly of "transparency" in the so-called probe of the world body's festering Oil-for- Food scandal - but don't believe a word of it.
For he seems to be running a coverup.
Benon Savan - the former Oil-for-Food boss, whose name appears on a list of foreigners bribed by Saddam Hussein's regime and who has been on a mysterious "vacation" pending retirement since the scandal broke - has ordered the program's contractors not to cooperate with requests for information.
Even if officials proceeding in Savan's name are merely foot-dragging, a stonewall is a stonewall.
Specifically, two letters signed "for Benon V. Savan" have come to light, each ordering a company with material knowledge of the scandal not to share any details with investigators.
One of those companies, the Swiss firm Cotecna, had employed Annan's son Kojo on its payroll as a "consultant" when the Oil-for-Food rip-offs began.
And Kofi Annan's official spokesmen admit that the secretary-general has personally approved blocking the sharing of relevant Oil-for-Food details with investigators. Perhaps an unfettered probe would get a little too close to home?
Meanwhile, the U.N. Secretariat - which administered the Oil-for-Food program - refused to provide a number of audits to Congress.
Still awaiting his own copies of these (and other) critical documents is former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, hired by Annan to conduct a separate, parallel investigation of the scandal.
Good luck to Volcker, too - for it has become crystal clear that Annan & Co. have every intention of fighting every honest effort to shed sunlight on the scandal.
The latest line from Turtle Bay is that the Oil-for-Food mess isn't really a scandal at all, just an anti-U.N. plot inspired by "right-wingers" - or, alternatively, by former Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi.
Those are shameful lies.
In fact, the Iraqi Governing Council has been probing the mess since January, when the Baghdad newspaper Al-Mada published its now-famous list of the 270 officials from 44 countries who were bribed with oil vouchers by Saddam (see above: Benon Savan).
Indeed, reports of massive corruption in the $46 billion program began years before the liberation of Iraq opened government records to inspection.
And only last weekend Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader on the Governing Council, announced that the body has obtained larger and more comprehensive lists of individuals, companies and governments that received suspicious payments from U.N.-supervised oil sales.
This hasn't stopped ardent advocates of a U.N.-administered Iraq from trying to wish the scandal away. The New York Times, for example, has consistently editorialized for a U.N. takeover - and simply refused to cover the Oil-for-Food scandal for weeks after it first broke.
No talk of right-wing plots can alter the plain truth:
* That much of the food, hospital supplies and other humanitarian goods that were supposed to be bought with Oil-for-Food funds never were, because contractors overcharged the program and kicked back a percentage of the proceeds to Iraqi officials.
* That fully half of the 13 percent of Oil-for-Food revenues that were supposed to go to the Kurds living in the northern No-Fly Zone - some $4.4 billion - is still unaccounted for. The money seems to have been hijacked by Saddam's officials while U.N. "watchmen" turned a blind eye.
* That the Oil-for-Food office never transferred its database to the Coalition Provisional Authority - despite Benon Savan's assurances to the Security Council that it had done so.
* That many Oil-for-Food contractors turned out to be false fronts or non-existent when the CPA tried to contact them.
* That Oil-for-Food funds meant for a full range of humanitarian projects were instead diverted to pay for luxury cars and the construction of an Olympic Stadium for Saddam's son Uday - a project that Kofi Annan personally approved.
* That the United Nations can't begin to explain how all of this happened, or how its oversight system failed.
Assuming, of course, that the United Nations ever intended for the oversight system to work in the first place.
One way or another, it's time to find out.
Happily, the much-maligned (by Democrats) Patriot Act contains the tools needed to pry open some of Turtle Bay's box of dirty secrets.
Here's how it could work:
It's beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein paid money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
And there is evidence that Saddam had financial and other ties to al Qaeda terrorists. For example, two firms doing business with Saddam via Oil-for-Food are reportedly linked to a financier associated with Osama bin Laden.
Since Oil-for-Food was Saddam's chief source of cash, it's safe to assume that the money he lavished on terrorists came from program kickbacks processed along with other Oil-for-Food revenues by BNP Paribas - a powerful French commercial bank chartered to do business in New York state.
Now, Kofi Annan may manage to keep U.N. information away from investigators - but you can be sure that BNP Paribas kept a full set of discoverable books.
And the Patriot Act grants Treasury Secretary John Snow substantial power to investigate U.S.-chartered banks suspected of having been involved - knowingly or otherwise - in terrorist activity.
Paribas may not have consciously bankrolled Osama.
But Snow nonetheless can subpoena its records to find out how much of Saddam's ill-gotten cash passed through the bank - and where it went.
And he has the power to look at all of the bank's Oil-for-Food dealings since the passage of the Patriot Act.
That's precisely what he needs to do.
And to hell with Kofi Annan's stonewall.
Posted by maximpost
at 3:28 PM EDT