III.  Iraq

On the French Invasion | August 22, 2003

Odds are you don’t know of, or are only passively familiar with, John Gibson, host of the Fox News Channel’s The Big Story.  The show occupies the 5pm to 6pm Eastern time slot; while most of the United States is either at work or headed home from work, Gibson is hosting and, at the conclusion of each show, running some of the best smack on cable television.  Take this example from last Monday, 18 August: “Let’s play a guessing game.  Guess which country recently sent a secret military mission to Brazil and Columbia, without telling either country it was about to – well – launch a small invasion?”

What’s this?!  “This country also didn’t ask the U.N. Security Council for permission to conduct a military operation in Brazil and Columbia.  It just went ahead on its own, in defiance of international law.  This country also botched the whole operation so badly that the newspapers at home called it ‘The Bungle in the Jungle.’”  Okay, who was it?  “It was those cheese-eating surrender monkeys, the French – the very same people who have trashed America for going on a year now, saying our war in Iraq was illegal and illegitimate because we didn’t have U.N. approval.”  (“Cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” by the way, is quite possibly the greatest descriptive term in the history of the English language, first spoken about French language students on The Simpsons and later made popular in conservative circles by National Review’s Jonah Goldberg.)

For those who equate anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism with good policy, and who therefore take the United Nations seriously when it comes to international affairs, this should be of no small interest.  Last month, four French men offered a Brazilian bush pilot named Cleilton de Abreu £3,500 to fly them from Manaus to an airstrip near Columbia’s border.  “What de Abreu could never have guessed,” explains the UK’s Telegraph, “… was that he was carrying French secret service agents and a high-ranking government official.”  For what?  “They were the advance unit of an extraordinary mission to rescue [Columbian politician] Ingrid Betancourt … who was kidnapped by Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia [a.k.a. Farc] … while campaigning as a candidate in a presidential election 17 months ago.” [1]

Betancourt has no real modern connections to France, other than she has a French passport as “a result of her first marriage to a diplomat,” and that her family considers French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepan, who taught Betancourt political science in Paris 20 years ago, a “close friend.”  (Her autobiography was also a French bestseller, in the parallel universe where that means something.)

As you might have imagined, things didn’t go as planned and the whole operation failed miserably.  “France stands accused of secretly negotiating with one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations behind the backs of the governments of Brazil and Columbia, both of which insist they were never informed about the proposed mission …. Despite vigorous denials, the suspicion remains that a deal with Farc to exchange Betancourt for arms and / or millions of dollars had been on the table.”  (What?!  Arms for hostages?!  Someone get Lawrence Walsh on the phone!   The emphasis was added to reflect the Iran-Contra feel, for those Democrats who may have otherwise failed to make the connection.)

Subsequent denials fell apart under scrutiny and de Villepan was finally forced to apologize to Celso Amorim (his Brazilian counterpart), who accepted the apology, but who apparently didn’t speak for the diplomat who suggested Brazil expel French diplomats, saying France “would do better not to treat us like one of their African colonies.”  (Ouch, babe.) [2]

Just so the criteria is well established for future military debate: Authors of Franco-bestsellers / Brazilian politicians are worth unsanctioned invasions and negotiations with terrorist organizations so long as someone in your administration taught them at university.  However, bringing to an abrupt end a toilet dictatorship responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, which had WMD programs, which invaded Kuwait on its own accord without U.N. approval and which ignored 17 U.N. resolutions is absolutely out of the question.  Well, all right.

What to Say About WMD | February 13, 2004

From the moment President Bush first uttered the phrase “Axis of Evil,” it was clear – at least it was clear enough to be mentioned in this space – he had an eye on Iraq; it was the only member of the Axis we could logically invade.  Why “logically”?  More than Iran and North Korea, Iraq had most openly defied “the will of the world.”  It was the will of the world that removed Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait and passed nearly 20 United Nations resolutions making plain the conditions of Iraq’s surrender weren’t suggestions, but demands.  And … well, we knew Hussein had weapons of mass destruction because we still had the receipts.

Let’s forget the suggestion President Bush had Hussein targeted from inauguration day.  If the World Trade Center hadn’t collapsed, Saddam and the boys very well may have been left alone.  Most dictators, while frowned upon by American leaders, are left alone.  At the time of “The Axis of Evil” we were unsure of Iran’s exact capabilities and intentions but were fairly confident in the knowledge North Korea was much more likely to drop the Bomb on South Korea than it was to fly one into Manhattan.  The concern, the very legitimate concern, was that although Hussein didn’t have the capability to drop an anthrax bomb on New York City, there was nothing stopping him from selling anthrax to more motivated nations or terrorist outfits (e.g., al Qaeda).

So it was that Saddam Hussein was told to list all WMD in his possession by a certain day in December 2002.  What arrived were fragmented volumes of documents and computer discs admitting to certain quantities of VX nerve gas (3.9 tons worth), sarin gas (812 tons) and anthrax (2,200 gallons).  But nothing was said of other WMD thought to exist when the United Nations was booted out of Iraq in 1998.  Came this message: “You can’t be trusted, and it’s going to be either the weapons or you; it’s sure as hell not going to be us in any case.”

The rest is history.

Now look: Republicans – and I was certainly one of them – made no small point of connecting the necessity of the Iraqi War to WMD, saying that Hussein’s instability made America’s security all the more important.  In the last 10 months we have unseated the dictator and killed his barbarian sons; we have uncovered dozens of mass graves holding hundreds of thousands of corpses; we have heard tragic tales of rape and torture.  But we haven’t found Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and the odds are good we’re not going to find them, at least not in Iraq.  (Syria may be another story.)  If you parse the Kay report you will find intent and wheels in motion, but no weapons.

How does the administration 1) explain the mistake and 2) sufficiently rebound?  The first part turns out to be simpler than one would think, the only question being whether non-partisans will accept it: The intelligence was bad – from the United States to the United Nations, from Great Britain to Germany, from Russia to France; from Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to Kofi Annan, from Tony Blair to Gerhardt Schroeder, from Vladimir Putin to Jacques Chirac.  The United States wasn’t alone is believing there were WMD in Iraq, just in being worried enough to do something about them.

The rebound is another story, a cause not helped by the president’s disastrous appearance on Meet the Press.  What may have helped?  Maybe: “The military was sent into Iraq because all reliable intelligence from around the world suggested WMD were there, and I didn’t want them here.  As of today, no WMD have been found.  My administration will find out why the intelligence was faulty.  In the meantime, if there is an American citizen who can look himself in the mirror and honestly believe America, Iraq and the Middle East aren’t better off with Saddam Hussein out of power, then they should vote for John Kerry.”

It wouldn’t stop the second guessing, the character assassinations and the random shots Nominee Kerry is firing from the stump.  But it would at least be honest, something America deserves.

Let Allah Sort Them Out | April 23, 2004

Announces the CBC: “The death toll from Wednesday’s suicide bombing in Basra rose to 73 overnight [from Wednesday to Thursday], as the devastated Iraqi city began to bury its dead.  The car bombs targeting police installations in the southern Iraqi city, thought to have been triggered by suicide bombers, killed dozens of civilians, including up to 20 school children.” [3]

About those children, the Associated Press on Wednesday: “Iraqis pulled charred and torn bodies from mangled vehicles in front of the Saudia police station, located by Basra’s crowded main street market.  Two vans carrying schoolchildren were destroyed, one carrying kindergartners, the other carrying middle-school girls.  Dead children, burned beyond recognition, were taken to hospital morgues …. Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia was active in Basra … during the early days of its uprising across the south this month.

“Meanwhile, an agreement aimed at bringing peace to Fallujah … met troubles only a day after its implementation began.  A heavy battle broke out Wednesday morning in the city’s north side, where up to 40 insurgents attacked Marine positions, commanders said.”  Still more: “As of noon [Wednesday, and again on Thursday], no guerrillas have turned in any heavy weapons, the most crucial tenet of the agreement in U.S. eyes, said Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne.  The U.S. military has warned it may resume its assault on Fallujah if the agreement falls through.”[4]

If insurgents don’t play nice, the military may resume its assault on Fallujah.  Funny it wouldn’t be thought of the other way around, that Fallujah must fall in line despite the tone if its citizenry, or the military will force its submission in the name of Iraqi sovereignty.

As Fallujah has carried on I have been reminded of Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first chancellor.  In February 1961, Nikita Khrushchev wrote Adenauer and suggested maybe it was time the allied occupation of the West ended.  Mr. William F. Buckley, Jr. sums it up nicely in his great book The Fall of the Berlin Wall: “Moscow offered Bonn a choice: Take a seat at the negotiating table.  By doing so, Bonn would exercise ‘broad opportunities for safeguarding its interests in West Berlin.’  That, or wait to negotiate directly with a newly sovereign East German government, without any mediating Soviet presence.”  And?  “Adenauer pointed out that to negotiate with the Soviet Union meant to acknowledge a hypothesis: Namely, that there was something the Allies were prepared to give up.  Since that was not the case, there was, Q.E.D., no point in negotiating.” [5]

Apply this Adenaur Principle to the current struggle: What’s the point in negotiating with insurgents when they have taken lives, will continue taking lives and offer no legitimate peace in return for their own lives being spared?  Say the United States gives the insurgents everything they want.  What actually keeps them from reaping whatever benefits and continuing their attacks?  Good will?  Well, that’s the thing.  There are no guarantees with terrorists, only false hopes.

How else should an occupying nation deal with homegrown insurgents?  Once you realize there is a greater humanity at stake than that of the terrorists, the answer becomes clear (it was first advanced here last July 18th): “[Even though] recent sweeps have proven productive, not nearly enough uppity Iraqis are being killed to make a difference in the ultimate safety of our soldiers.”  In other words, there is nothing so wrong in the Sunni Triangle that it cannot be helped along by a U.S. soldier standing on a tank holding al-Sadr’s head in his hand.

There is tiny logic in saying that “stooping to this level” makes us no better than the insurgents, and in doing so we open the door for the creation of another al-Sadr, or a dozen of him.  But to do nothing creates a notion of passivity, which will be taken as a cue to create another al-Sadr, or a dozen of him.  Terrorists and insurgents don’t need an excuse; they will happily bend circumstances to their whims no matter America’s course of action.

To Hell with them.  Open fire; set loose the Dogs of War and let Allah sort them out.

Between Abu Ghraib and Nick Berg | May 11, 2004

The United States is investigating the deaths of 10 Iraqi prisoners, two of which are considered homicides.  Begin, then, with a simple principle, that unjust deaths are more serious and deserve more consideration than the simple dishonor and humiliation represented in the nude pyramid.  Now ask yourself why entire episodes of Hardball aren’t being dedicated to how and why those homicides occurred.  Other than the fact pictures of the abuse (and not of the deaths) exist in the public forum, and can therefore lend themselves to easier consideration, there doesn’t seem to be a palatable answer.

Meanwhile, Nick Berg’s execution video continues to make the rounds.  No better way to explain the thing other than to say it portrays a barbarity and inhumanity unfathomable to stable intellects.  Berg sits in front of five hooded captors, one of whom reads a statement before commanding Berg to read one prepared for him: his name, those of his parents and siblings, his city of residence (Philadelphia).  The middle captor grabs Berg, a large knife is brandished and brought to his throat; his screams fill the room until his body relents, at which point his head is presented to the camera.  Nick Berg’s body was found by an overpass in Baghdad last weekend.  He was only 26.

Let’s back up.  We have developed a difficulty in saying what bothers us most about the prisoner photos.  Why?  Because to utter this truth lends credence to the idea of Ugly Americanism, and too many of us fear that label more than are willing to accept and speak the truth.  But the fact of the matter is, the sorts of humiliations forced onto the prisoners aren’t expected to come from our side of the Iraqi conflict because we are morally superior to our enemies, and are expected to act morally superior when it comes to the treatment of prisoners.  Nick Berg’s beheading, so tragic and horrible, is par for the course.  And nothing new.  Daniel Pearl was beheaded; others have been beheaded; still more will be beheaded.

Now to the Left, where some have implicitly said the prisoner photos represent such a great, across-the-board moral failing that the Iraqi effort is officially a lost cause.  Before the release of the Berg video, William Rivers Pitt wrote that Abu Ghraib brought to an end “a week so awful, so terrible, so wrenching that the most basic fabric of that which we believe is good and great – the most basic moral fabric of the United States of America – has been torn bitterly asunder.”  More, “The worst, amazingly, is yet to come.  A new battery of photographs and videotapes, as yet unreleased, awaits over the horizon of our abused understanding.  These photos and videos … are reported to show U.S. soldiers gang raping an Iraqi woman, U.S. soldiers beating an Iraqi man nearly to death, U.S. troops posing, smirks affixed, with decomposing Iraqi bodies, and Iraqi troops under U.S. command raping young boys.”[6]

President Bush and Congress have seen confidential pictures and videos.  One assumes these are not confidential materials merely because they are more of what we have seen; what we have seen seems, as Rush Limbaugh so perfectly suggested, not much different from a Skull and Bones initiation.  If any of the things alleged by Pitt turn out to be true, I will demand the death penalty where applicable, lifetime imprisonment without view of another blue sky for others, unemployment and forced homelessness for whoever should remain.  (Not coincidentally, the willingness to do so is what separates some of us here on the Right from some of those there on the Left.)

But until and unless that material surfaces and proves so horrible, you’ll have to forgive me for not having the desire to dismantle the entire military establishment for the actions of a very small number of soldiers (and probably some in the chain of command), or to fire Rumsfeld, or to impeach Bush.  I have seen the Nick Berg video; I have seen the Daniel Pearl video; I have seen the video of the four Americans massacred, their body parts hung from a bridge to burn.  I have watched them because they remind me that we are fighting a battle for humanity more than for “democracy in the Middle East.”  It’s nearly impossible to give a damn about the nude pyramid and the guy on the leash once you’ve seen a man scream until the exact moment his head is removed from his body. [7]

Iraqi Election Q and A | February 1, 2005

Question One: How can any election be legitimate if so many people – Sunnis – refuse to participate?  This would be an understandable concern if this were Iraq’s first and only free election, but in the near term it will vote on whether to ratify a constitution (no later than October), then to establish a permanent government (no later than December).  Relax … there’s plenty of time for Sunnis to threaten and obstruct, or to adopt the old Cook County Method of registering dead people and dogs to vote.  They’ll be up and stealing elections in no time.

But seriously, if the American Nazi Party announced it was boycotting the 2006 midterm elections, exactly who or what would be harmed?  Such is the feeling with Sunnis and this election.  Remember, the underlying point of Sunday’s election was that Iraqis were free to choose not only which ticket to vote for, but whether to vote at all.  Those who didn’t vote exercised the same right as those who did, and good for them.  Deciding in favor of inaction is still a choice, which is still better than Saddam’s old electoral landslides, where participation wasn’t so much optional as compulsory.  Further, those who win will be called upon to frame a constitution – no small deal – and they will ultimately be held accountable for it.  What’s wrong with that?

Question Two: What effect will Sunday’s election have on other Arab nations?  It’s always warmed the conservative heart to believe The Vote will send winds of change blowing across the entire Middle East; we’re softies that way.  We hope the mere thought of stepping into a voting booth without restrictions will by itself give birth to one peoples’ revolution after another.  But remember, we’re the same people who dismissed “the potential for outrage on the Arab street” over US policy, so we shouldn’t be so quick to believe this vote is something farther reaching than it really is.

True, some Arabs outside Iraq and Afghanistan may begin wondering why Palestinians are allowed, despite Israel, to choose their own leader.  Or why the Great Satan’s occupations always lead to free elections.  But it’s premature to suggest Iraq’s election day will change anything – hell, we’ve been waiting for the much touted Iranian youth movement to amount to something for 20 years with no substantive results. 

Question Three: Alan Colmes wondered Sunday if Iraq is now the model for future action, and if so, shouldn’t America start overthrowing other Arab dictators?

A spurious question; there isn’t a model for overthrowing dictatorships the Left will accept so long as Republicans are pulling the trigger (literally or figuratively).  That notwithstanding, Colmes is hoping to hear two distinct answers, and here they are: 1) No, Iraq cannot be an ideal model because we’ve made too many mistakes.  Nevertheless, Iraqis are voting and there is now a very faint light at the end of the tunnel.  We will learn from what we have caused and faced, and hopefully do better next time.  2) Yes, Alan, if the United States possessed the manpower, the money and the bombs, you can rest assured we’d have spent all of 2003 storming relentlessly across three-quarters of the Middle East, overthrowing various toilet regimes while overseeing the orderly political transition of those whose leaders decided forced Democracy was better than spider holes.  Happy?

Question Four: What does this mean for Democrats?  They had better take Iraq’s vote at least as seriously as they took Ohio’s vote (only without the bitterness), and the more statements of goodwill and support Democrats can issue, the better.  But they should wait at least until the results are announced before wondering loudly whether President Bush will get around to international reconstruction (or whatever Senator Kerry was talking about on Meet the Press).  Iraqis are warming to a process that was all but foreign to them three days ago – for Democrats to step on it so soon because they want Bush to fail is terribly petty, even for modern politicians.