By William Fisher
Dear Senator Kerry:
I am a student of international affairs and a political news junkie. I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the world, so it’s not me I’m worried about.
It’s the American voter.
They’re getting snookered. They’re being misled – again. They’re being told that things are betting better in Iraq, when clearly they are getting worse. They’re being told we’re going after ‘terrorists’ in Iraq, when in fact we have created their largest and most successful recruiting office. They’re being told there will soon be elections in Afghanistan, yet not being told that the Bush Administration is failing to get the international community to fulfill its promises to protect the polling places. They’re still being told that there was a connection between Osama Bin Laden, Al Quaida, Saddam Hussein, and 9/11, when there is no credible evidence to back up that claim. They are being told that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a high priority for the Bush Administration, when it has been on a distant back-burner for many months. And they are still being told that if we ‘stay the course’, freedom and democracy will magically start springing up all over the Middle East, when the truth is that America is so disrespected in that neighborhood that anything we touch is destined to go sour.
Senator, I don’t care what you did or did not do thirty-five years ago, and I don’t give a hoot if Lt. Bush never showed up for National Guard service. All of that is ancient history and a huge and dangerous distraction for those who will cast their ballots in November.
I know the ‘average’ American voter can’t afford to spend hours and weeks studying the issues. For better or worse, about all a politician can try to do is to get their attention. And, like it or not, that means using the fewest possible words to talk to the voters in a way that is direct, honest and, most important of all, unambiguous. Enough nuance: The voters aren’t getting it!
I know you’re in a tough spot, having voted to give the President the authority to take us to war. And then saying you would have done it again if you knew then what you know now. You’ve made your job tougher still by saying you’re going to ‘internationalize’ our effort in Iraq, when you must know that there is not the remotest chance this will happen.
What the American voter needs to know is what you would do now, in Iraq and elsewhere, and exactly your plan to get us out of the mess Mr. Bush got us into.
No one else can do this job. You wanted to be the candidate, and now you’re there. You are running in the most consequential election since the Great Depression. How it comes out will decide the direction of the United States for generations to come. Only you are in a position to influence the result.
You and your advisors need to figure out how to do that and how to do it now. Because it will soon be too late.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Monday, September 13, 2004
GOOD SOLDIER POWELL
By William Fisher
Watching Colin Powell testify on Darfur before a Senate committee last week, I was reminded of other times when the two most trusted men in the United States were Walter Kronkite and Colin Powell.
Kronkite was for many years the anchor of the CBS Evening News, back before we got most of our news via cable. It was he who told us President Kennedy was dead.
Colin Powell, much decorated Vietnam warrior, former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ended up as Secretary of State in the Administration of George W. Bush.
As I watched Secretary Powell courageously assert that Sudan was indeed guilty of genocide, I found myself overcome with sadness about the deep hole the misadventures of George W. Bush have dug for this brave man, who could have been elected president had he not declined to run for the Republican nomination in 2000.
And I, a lifelong Democrat, would have voted for him. I trusted him. I knew that, like all great solders, he valued peace with freedom above all else.
I know Secretary Powell doesn’t want sympathy from me – or anyone else. He remains, to a fault, the good soldier.
But these days, precisely because he is every inch the good soldier, he must find himself obliged to say or imply things that are simply not believable. That things are going better in Iraq. That peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is really a top priority in the Bush Administration. That there was a connection between Saddam Hussein, Iraq, al Quaida, and 9/11.
Colin Powell was the man President Bush dispatched to the United Nations to make the case for intelligence we now know was largely incorrect – and which provided the basis for the US invasion of Iraq. He put his reputation on the line – and lost.
It has been said that Colin Powell is the best-known and least influential Secretary of State in American history. He has been consistently snookered by the neo-conservative cabal at the Defense Department, and his public credibility irrecoverably damaged by CIA groupthink. His plan for winning the peace in Iraq was ignored and shelved. As recounted in painful detail in Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, the President told his Secretary of State of the decision to invade Iraq at the 11th hour. He warned Mr. Bush that ‘if you break it, you own it’. It was too late to undo the decision.
So now, the US owns it – notwithstanding all the election-year rhetoric about returning ‘sovereignty’ to the Iraqis.
Secretary Powell will never admit any of this. His life as a soldier has made him too loyal. But the people who best understand his dilemma are the ones who work for him. At the State Department, Colin Powell is admired, respected, even loved. Many people there say he is the best Secretary of State since George Marshall. The Bush Administration has squandered his enormous gifts.
And, at the Darfur hearing before the Senate, one could again see the spark of the Colin Powell that was and is no more.
I hope Secretary Powell avoids the embarrassment of another term in a second Bush Administration. I suspect he will spare us the obligatory ‘kiss and tell’ book. I hope he will head the World Bank.
Watching Colin Powell testify on Darfur before a Senate committee last week, I was reminded of other times when the two most trusted men in the United States were Walter Kronkite and Colin Powell.
Kronkite was for many years the anchor of the CBS Evening News, back before we got most of our news via cable. It was he who told us President Kennedy was dead.
Colin Powell, much decorated Vietnam warrior, former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ended up as Secretary of State in the Administration of George W. Bush.
As I watched Secretary Powell courageously assert that Sudan was indeed guilty of genocide, I found myself overcome with sadness about the deep hole the misadventures of George W. Bush have dug for this brave man, who could have been elected president had he not declined to run for the Republican nomination in 2000.
And I, a lifelong Democrat, would have voted for him. I trusted him. I knew that, like all great solders, he valued peace with freedom above all else.
I know Secretary Powell doesn’t want sympathy from me – or anyone else. He remains, to a fault, the good soldier.
But these days, precisely because he is every inch the good soldier, he must find himself obliged to say or imply things that are simply not believable. That things are going better in Iraq. That peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is really a top priority in the Bush Administration. That there was a connection between Saddam Hussein, Iraq, al Quaida, and 9/11.
Colin Powell was the man President Bush dispatched to the United Nations to make the case for intelligence we now know was largely incorrect – and which provided the basis for the US invasion of Iraq. He put his reputation on the line – and lost.
It has been said that Colin Powell is the best-known and least influential Secretary of State in American history. He has been consistently snookered by the neo-conservative cabal at the Defense Department, and his public credibility irrecoverably damaged by CIA groupthink. His plan for winning the peace in Iraq was ignored and shelved. As recounted in painful detail in Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, the President told his Secretary of State of the decision to invade Iraq at the 11th hour. He warned Mr. Bush that ‘if you break it, you own it’. It was too late to undo the decision.
So now, the US owns it – notwithstanding all the election-year rhetoric about returning ‘sovereignty’ to the Iraqis.
Secretary Powell will never admit any of this. His life as a soldier has made him too loyal. But the people who best understand his dilemma are the ones who work for him. At the State Department, Colin Powell is admired, respected, even loved. Many people there say he is the best Secretary of State since George Marshall. The Bush Administration has squandered his enormous gifts.
And, at the Darfur hearing before the Senate, one could again see the spark of the Colin Powell that was and is no more.
I hope Secretary Powell avoids the embarrassment of another term in a second Bush Administration. I suspect he will spare us the obligatory ‘kiss and tell’ book. I hope he will head the World Bank.
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME
By William Fisher
“How are we to win a war against blood-spattered enemies whom our own free press continues to protect through politically correct sanitization? It wasn't no-name militants or wayward guerrillas who have butchered, beheaded and slaughtered thousands of innocents over the last three years alone.”
So wrote Michelle Malkin, the newest darling of the American right-wing, in the Houston Chronicle, followed by a litany of all the horrible things Muslims have done “in the name of Allah”. Ms. Malkin attacks the mainstream media for continuing to "whitewash" exactly “how deadly the Muslim terrorists we face are.”
She faults the mainstream media for referring to them as “generic ‘militants’ or ‘guerrillas’ or ‘rebels’ or, ‘activists’. She wants them called Muslim Terrorists.
But just what would the term ‘Muslim terrorists’ add to the reader’s understanding? None of the information journalists usually try to convey in a short description, like where they’re from or what they believe in. There are over a billion Muslims. They live all over the world. They have different interpretations of their religion. Those who carry out acts of terror represent a tiny fraction of Islam’s adherents.
On the contrary, what the use of ‘Muslim terrorists’ does is to paint all of Islam with the same uninformative brush and promote religious stereotypes. It would be like describing the Ku Klux Klan as a Christian extremist organization. What do we learn about Christianity from the KKK? Or describing the young man who assassinated Prime Minister Rabin of Israel as a ‘Jewish extremist’. What does that teach us about Judaism? Or calling Timothy McVeigh the ‘Roman Catholic bomber’ of Oklahoma City. Did he do what he did because of his religion?
As a journalist, my judgment would be that a person’s religion is relevant only when the person represents the predominant thinking of the religion. Like the Pope. Clearly, none of the examples above – or Ms. Malkin’s ‘Muslim terrorists’ – meets that test.
As for acts of terror carried out “in the name of Allah”, since the beginning of religions in the world, people have told the most outrageous lies and committed the most egregious acts -- and invoked their God to make their causes righteous.
This includes the Crusaders, the Ku Klux Klan, Timothy McVeigh, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, skinhead militias, creationists, and other fringe groups who have attempted to highjack great religions “in the name of …”
Many Muslims dislike the United States. So do believers in many other faiths. That doesn’t make them ‘terrorists’.
This is not a political correctness issue. It is an accuracy in reporting issue. Reporting should illuminate. Ms. Malkin’s formula would obfuscate.
The writer has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy administration.
.
“How are we to win a war against blood-spattered enemies whom our own free press continues to protect through politically correct sanitization? It wasn't no-name militants or wayward guerrillas who have butchered, beheaded and slaughtered thousands of innocents over the last three years alone.”
So wrote Michelle Malkin, the newest darling of the American right-wing, in the Houston Chronicle, followed by a litany of all the horrible things Muslims have done “in the name of Allah”. Ms. Malkin attacks the mainstream media for continuing to "whitewash" exactly “how deadly the Muslim terrorists we face are.”
She faults the mainstream media for referring to them as “generic ‘militants’ or ‘guerrillas’ or ‘rebels’ or, ‘activists’. She wants them called Muslim Terrorists.
But just what would the term ‘Muslim terrorists’ add to the reader’s understanding? None of the information journalists usually try to convey in a short description, like where they’re from or what they believe in. There are over a billion Muslims. They live all over the world. They have different interpretations of their religion. Those who carry out acts of terror represent a tiny fraction of Islam’s adherents.
On the contrary, what the use of ‘Muslim terrorists’ does is to paint all of Islam with the same uninformative brush and promote religious stereotypes. It would be like describing the Ku Klux Klan as a Christian extremist organization. What do we learn about Christianity from the KKK? Or describing the young man who assassinated Prime Minister Rabin of Israel as a ‘Jewish extremist’. What does that teach us about Judaism? Or calling Timothy McVeigh the ‘Roman Catholic bomber’ of Oklahoma City. Did he do what he did because of his religion?
As a journalist, my judgment would be that a person’s religion is relevant only when the person represents the predominant thinking of the religion. Like the Pope. Clearly, none of the examples above – or Ms. Malkin’s ‘Muslim terrorists’ – meets that test.
As for acts of terror carried out “in the name of Allah”, since the beginning of religions in the world, people have told the most outrageous lies and committed the most egregious acts -- and invoked their God to make their causes righteous.
This includes the Crusaders, the Ku Klux Klan, Timothy McVeigh, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, skinhead militias, creationists, and other fringe groups who have attempted to highjack great religions “in the name of …”
Many Muslims dislike the United States. So do believers in many other faiths. That doesn’t make them ‘terrorists’.
This is not a political correctness issue. It is an accuracy in reporting issue. Reporting should illuminate. Ms. Malkin’s formula would obfuscate.
The writer has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy administration.
.
Sunday, September 05, 2004
WHAT THE REPUBLICANS SAID — AND DIDN'T SAY
By William Fisher
The Republican convention gets my vote as the most expensive and deceptive bait-and-switch Un-Reality TV show of the year.
Before the TV networks turned on the switch, we heard from the "right wing" of the party, which adopted a platform embodying its "core principals": anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research, no gun control, prayer in schools, and so forth.
Then, in TV primetime, we had three superstars who obviously got confused and showed up at the wrong venue: Messrs. Giuliani (former mayor of New York City), Schwartzenegger (governor of California), and Pataki (governor of New York). All pro-life, all pro-stem cell, some even in favor of gun control. Imagine that!
Then, we had an even softer face of the party in the person of the president's wife, Laura, telling us how compassionate her husband really is.
Then we had the week's most vitriolic voice: Senator Zell Miller, a disaffected Democrat from the deep south, whose outrageous rhetoric made the next speaker, Vice President Dick Cheney, sound positively like a Sunday school teacher.
And, finally, came the president, who gave us a look at where America has been and where it's going.
A few examples:
"Soon every senior will be able to get prescription drug coverage, and nothing will hold us back. (We cut taxes and acted, so) our economy is growing again and creating jobs."
Fact: US economic growth has been worse than anemic, and the president would have to create 900,000 jobs a month between now and the election to avoid the worst record since Herbert Hoover just before the Great Depression of 1929. Last quarter, some 135,000 net new jobs were created. And most of these paid less than the ones workers lost. Much of the Bush tax cut benefited those who need them least.
"The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle."
Fact: America today is not "the story of expanding liberty". It is a story of diminished civil liberties and too-frequently botched prosecutions.
"To create jobs my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation and making the tax relief permanent."
Fact: President Bush, far from restraining spending, has run up a budget deficit of historic highs, which American children and grandchildren will be paying for generations to come.
"To create jobs, we will make our country less dependent on foreign sources of energy (we will) help workers take advantage of the expanding economy to find better and higher-paying jobs.”
Fact: If my memory is correct, lessening our dependence on foreign sources of energy was part of the president's acceptance speech four years ago. Since when, what has been done is absolutely nothing. And that's with the Republicans in charge of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
"(We) must allow small firms to join together to purchase (health) insurance at the discounts available to big companies... we will make sure that health decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by bureaucrats in Washington, DC."
Fact: The president's prescription drug "discount plan" is a gross act of public deception. Discounts will be minuscule. And the president would allow small business to "join together to purchase (health) insurance at the discounts available to big companies”, even though Bush's so-called health care initiative specifically bars the federal government from using its enormous purchasing power to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices. Under the president's health care plan, decisions are not being made by doctors and patients; they are being made by drug manufacturers and insurance companies. Big money contributors all.
(And on education): "We are transforming our schools by raising standards and focusing on results."
Fact: The president — joined by liberal Senator Ted Kennedy — launched his "No Child Left Behind" education program to improve the quality of education — and then failed to fully fund it. The knowledge gained by American children remains near the bottom compared with test scores in virtually all advanced economies. A large proportion of US kids can't show you Mexico or Canada on a map!
But the president left his choicest remarks for the war on terror. He wrapped himself in Sept. 11 and declared: "We have fought the terrorists across the earth. We have tripled funding for homeland security and trained half a million first responders. We are transforming our military and reforming and strengthening our intelligence services. We are staying on the offensive, striking terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. And we are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East because freedom will bring a future of hope and the peace we all want. Because we acted to defend our country, the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taleban are history, more than 50 million people have been liberated and democracy is coming to the broader Middle East.
"We are serving a vital and historic cause that will make our country safer. Free societies in the Middle East will be hopeful societies, which no longer feed resentments and breed violence for export. Free governments in the Middle East will fight terrorists instead of harboring them, and that helps us keep the peace."
America's crusader-in-chief uttered not a word about Iran, nor about North Korea, whose threats are far graver than any the US ever faced from Iraq. Nor did he have anything to say about Afghanistan's return to the title of number one poppy-grower-to-the-world, nor about the pathetic non-planning for the Iraqi post-war, nor about the chaos that persists in both these places, nor of the ever-rising body count, nor of the hatred for US policy generated in the Middle East by its lopsided Israel policy and its ham-handed introduction of its Greater Middle East Initiative, nor about the findings of the Sept. 11 Commission or the slam-dunk intelligence that gave us the rationale for invading Iraq.
In this political theatre of the absurd, facts are mere inconvenient obstacles in the path of White House speechwriters.
One final word: A favorite construct of the president and his advisors is "striking terrorists abroad (means) we do not have to face them here at home". If there is some occult logic in this, it eludes me. The president needs to know that terrorists are multitaskers.
Before the convention began, columnist David Ignatius wrote: "Bush, who has defined himself through his role as a "wartime president", has a special responsibility this convention week to explain how (the war on terrorism) is going — and what strategy he will pursue if he wins a second term. Bush's rival, John Kerry, owes the country the same clarity."
In the event, the American people got neither from either. They deserve better.
The writer has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy administration.
The Republican convention gets my vote as the most expensive and deceptive bait-and-switch Un-Reality TV show of the year.
Before the TV networks turned on the switch, we heard from the "right wing" of the party, which adopted a platform embodying its "core principals": anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research, no gun control, prayer in schools, and so forth.
Then, in TV primetime, we had three superstars who obviously got confused and showed up at the wrong venue: Messrs. Giuliani (former mayor of New York City), Schwartzenegger (governor of California), and Pataki (governor of New York). All pro-life, all pro-stem cell, some even in favor of gun control. Imagine that!
Then, we had an even softer face of the party in the person of the president's wife, Laura, telling us how compassionate her husband really is.
Then we had the week's most vitriolic voice: Senator Zell Miller, a disaffected Democrat from the deep south, whose outrageous rhetoric made the next speaker, Vice President Dick Cheney, sound positively like a Sunday school teacher.
And, finally, came the president, who gave us a look at where America has been and where it's going.
A few examples:
"Soon every senior will be able to get prescription drug coverage, and nothing will hold us back. (We cut taxes and acted, so) our economy is growing again and creating jobs."
Fact: US economic growth has been worse than anemic, and the president would have to create 900,000 jobs a month between now and the election to avoid the worst record since Herbert Hoover just before the Great Depression of 1929. Last quarter, some 135,000 net new jobs were created. And most of these paid less than the ones workers lost. Much of the Bush tax cut benefited those who need them least.
"The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle."
Fact: America today is not "the story of expanding liberty". It is a story of diminished civil liberties and too-frequently botched prosecutions.
"To create jobs my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation and making the tax relief permanent."
Fact: President Bush, far from restraining spending, has run up a budget deficit of historic highs, which American children and grandchildren will be paying for generations to come.
"To create jobs, we will make our country less dependent on foreign sources of energy (we will) help workers take advantage of the expanding economy to find better and higher-paying jobs.”
Fact: If my memory is correct, lessening our dependence on foreign sources of energy was part of the president's acceptance speech four years ago. Since when, what has been done is absolutely nothing. And that's with the Republicans in charge of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
"(We) must allow small firms to join together to purchase (health) insurance at the discounts available to big companies... we will make sure that health decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by bureaucrats in Washington, DC."
Fact: The president's prescription drug "discount plan" is a gross act of public deception. Discounts will be minuscule. And the president would allow small business to "join together to purchase (health) insurance at the discounts available to big companies”, even though Bush's so-called health care initiative specifically bars the federal government from using its enormous purchasing power to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices. Under the president's health care plan, decisions are not being made by doctors and patients; they are being made by drug manufacturers and insurance companies. Big money contributors all.
(And on education): "We are transforming our schools by raising standards and focusing on results."
Fact: The president — joined by liberal Senator Ted Kennedy — launched his "No Child Left Behind" education program to improve the quality of education — and then failed to fully fund it. The knowledge gained by American children remains near the bottom compared with test scores in virtually all advanced economies. A large proportion of US kids can't show you Mexico or Canada on a map!
But the president left his choicest remarks for the war on terror. He wrapped himself in Sept. 11 and declared: "We have fought the terrorists across the earth. We have tripled funding for homeland security and trained half a million first responders. We are transforming our military and reforming and strengthening our intelligence services. We are staying on the offensive, striking terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. And we are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East because freedom will bring a future of hope and the peace we all want. Because we acted to defend our country, the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taleban are history, more than 50 million people have been liberated and democracy is coming to the broader Middle East.
"We are serving a vital and historic cause that will make our country safer. Free societies in the Middle East will be hopeful societies, which no longer feed resentments and breed violence for export. Free governments in the Middle East will fight terrorists instead of harboring them, and that helps us keep the peace."
America's crusader-in-chief uttered not a word about Iran, nor about North Korea, whose threats are far graver than any the US ever faced from Iraq. Nor did he have anything to say about Afghanistan's return to the title of number one poppy-grower-to-the-world, nor about the pathetic non-planning for the Iraqi post-war, nor about the chaos that persists in both these places, nor of the ever-rising body count, nor of the hatred for US policy generated in the Middle East by its lopsided Israel policy and its ham-handed introduction of its Greater Middle East Initiative, nor about the findings of the Sept. 11 Commission or the slam-dunk intelligence that gave us the rationale for invading Iraq.
In this political theatre of the absurd, facts are mere inconvenient obstacles in the path of White House speechwriters.
One final word: A favorite construct of the president and his advisors is "striking terrorists abroad (means) we do not have to face them here at home". If there is some occult logic in this, it eludes me. The president needs to know that terrorists are multitaskers.
Before the convention began, columnist David Ignatius wrote: "Bush, who has defined himself through his role as a "wartime president", has a special responsibility this convention week to explain how (the war on terrorism) is going — and what strategy he will pursue if he wins a second term. Bush's rival, John Kerry, owes the country the same clarity."
In the event, the American people got neither from either. They deserve better.
The writer has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy administration.
Thursday, September 02, 2004
THOSE DISAPPEARING NUMBERS
By William Fisher
It appears that as US casualties in Iraq edge ever-closer to 1,000, reports of the numbers of KIAs move further and further away from the front pages of American newspapers and the top of the TV evening news.
These days, with a few exceptions, US military casualties in Iraq are being reported as parts of other stories – for example, the battle for Najaf – or buried deep inside the paper or not reported at all. And information about Iraqi casualties is even harder to find, since the Pentagon does not track this figure.
Is this some vast journalistic or bureaucratic conspiracy to make President Bush look better? I don’t think so. I think what’s happening may be even worse. The US media – especially television -- always finds it difficult to cover more than one big story at the same time. Added to this multitasking challenge is the sense that the American public is just plain tired of reading and hearing these awful numbers. And who can blame them?
There will no doubt be a huge burst of ink and air when the KIA number reaches the ‘magic’ 1,000. After that, I suspect the issue will go back into hibernation as the political campaign gets even hotter – or some other high profile rape case eats up all the media time and space.
So, just for the record, here are the numbers:
As of September 1, 978 US military have been killed since the war began, on March 19, 2003, Since the President declared "Mission Accomplished", on May 1, 2003, 839 American troops have lost their lives. KIAs since the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, total 518. And 121 have been killed since the ‘handover of sovereignty’ on June 29, 2004.
There were an additional 127 deaths among non-US coalition forces, and 132 American fatalities in Afghanistan. Another 6,916 US fighters have been injured.
According to Patrick McDonnell of the Washington Post, “Although attention in recent weeks has focused on Najaf, where US forces battled Shiite Muslim militiamen, most of the deadly confrontations for American troops in newly independent Iraq have occurred in the Baghdad area and the so-called Sunni Triangle to the north and west. The concentration of attacks in those areas is a reminder that the fiercest and most organized opposition to US forces and the US-backed interim government continues to be in Sunni-dominated cities, such as Fallouja. Nationwide, US forces are being attacked 60 times per day on average, up 20% from the three-month period before the hand-over.”
President Bush now admits to a “miscalculation” in what he describes as a “catastrophic success”, and John Kerry tells us he would have voted to go to war even if he knew then what he knows now.
And neither of these gladiators appears to have a clue about how to get us out of what can no longer be denied is a major quagmire.
Earlier in our Iraqi adventure, many pundits pooh-poohed the notion that it could be compared to Vietnam. Our Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, assured us that all would be well, and that ”democracy is messy”. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be a lot messier than Rummy imagined or that the Pentagon planned for – if it planned at all.
What we are learning from Iraq – and what we should have learned from Vietnam – is that policies have consequences. And that the doctrine of preemption has deadly consequences.
We need to remember that. And, even more importantly, we need to remember that ‘the numbers’ we’re no longer seeing aren’t just numbers – they’re people. Young people who won’t ever get older.
Think about it.
It appears that as US casualties in Iraq edge ever-closer to 1,000, reports of the numbers of KIAs move further and further away from the front pages of American newspapers and the top of the TV evening news.
These days, with a few exceptions, US military casualties in Iraq are being reported as parts of other stories – for example, the battle for Najaf – or buried deep inside the paper or not reported at all. And information about Iraqi casualties is even harder to find, since the Pentagon does not track this figure.
Is this some vast journalistic or bureaucratic conspiracy to make President Bush look better? I don’t think so. I think what’s happening may be even worse. The US media – especially television -- always finds it difficult to cover more than one big story at the same time. Added to this multitasking challenge is the sense that the American public is just plain tired of reading and hearing these awful numbers. And who can blame them?
There will no doubt be a huge burst of ink and air when the KIA number reaches the ‘magic’ 1,000. After that, I suspect the issue will go back into hibernation as the political campaign gets even hotter – or some other high profile rape case eats up all the media time and space.
So, just for the record, here are the numbers:
As of September 1, 978 US military have been killed since the war began, on March 19, 2003, Since the President declared "Mission Accomplished", on May 1, 2003, 839 American troops have lost their lives. KIAs since the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, total 518. And 121 have been killed since the ‘handover of sovereignty’ on June 29, 2004.
There were an additional 127 deaths among non-US coalition forces, and 132 American fatalities in Afghanistan. Another 6,916 US fighters have been injured.
According to Patrick McDonnell of the Washington Post, “Although attention in recent weeks has focused on Najaf, where US forces battled Shiite Muslim militiamen, most of the deadly confrontations for American troops in newly independent Iraq have occurred in the Baghdad area and the so-called Sunni Triangle to the north and west. The concentration of attacks in those areas is a reminder that the fiercest and most organized opposition to US forces and the US-backed interim government continues to be in Sunni-dominated cities, such as Fallouja. Nationwide, US forces are being attacked 60 times per day on average, up 20% from the three-month period before the hand-over.”
President Bush now admits to a “miscalculation” in what he describes as a “catastrophic success”, and John Kerry tells us he would have voted to go to war even if he knew then what he knows now.
And neither of these gladiators appears to have a clue about how to get us out of what can no longer be denied is a major quagmire.
Earlier in our Iraqi adventure, many pundits pooh-poohed the notion that it could be compared to Vietnam. Our Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, assured us that all would be well, and that ”democracy is messy”. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be a lot messier than Rummy imagined or that the Pentagon planned for – if it planned at all.
What we are learning from Iraq – and what we should have learned from Vietnam – is that policies have consequences. And that the doctrine of preemption has deadly consequences.
We need to remember that. And, even more importantly, we need to remember that ‘the numbers’ we’re no longer seeing aren’t just numbers – they’re people. Young people who won’t ever get older.
Think about it.
Najaf, Arab crises and the road to regional self-determination
The article below is the work of Rami Khoury, Executive Editor of The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
The urban warfare in the Iraqi city of Najaf that pitted the ragtag Mehdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr against the combined armed forces of the American and Iraqi governments has been defused for the moment. Events in Najaf mirrored the fundamental personal emotions and public political forces that drive events in the increasingly violent Middle East: a motley band of young men with personal weapons following a volatile young leader stood their ground, challenged their national government in Baghdad, and suicidally fought the strongest military power in world. The crisis was defused through the personal intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shiite religious authority in Iraq (who originally comes from Iran).
The events help us to identify the real forces that drive the lives of the Sadr loyalists and the institutions of Iraqi society. Those can be summed up as the five crises that define the modern Arab world, which I listed last week as:
1. A crisis of sustainable human development, reflected in stagnation and disparity in water, jobs, nutrition, education, health and other human needs;
2. A crisis of sensible and stable statehood, with most Arab countries having suffered civil war, rebellions, border conflicts, terror and widespread emigration;
3. A crisis of citizenship rights, with public power and force exercised by small groups of unelected, unaccountable people;
4. A crisis of competing identities, including the modern state, pan-Arabism, Islam, tribalism, ethnicity, regional affiliations, gangsterism, commercialism, democracy, resistance,
terrorism and others;
5. A crisis of coexistence and unclear relations with Israel, Turkey, Iran, the USA and other external powers.
The cumulative consequences of these five crises, as reflected in the Najaf events, are very clear for those who wish to see them:
Low, erratic human development has generated millions of distressed individual Arabs whose daily life needs are so poorly met that they will gravitate to demagogues like Moqtada al-Sadr, in a desperate, often suicidal quest for money or meaning in their depleted lives.
They and others like them have battled every government in Baghdad in modern history, including the British, the Baathists, the Americans and the interim government of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi - because the centralized state has not served them or reflected their identity and needs. US President George W. Bush and Iyad Allawi promised Iraqis democracy, and sent tanks and helicopter gunships to Najaf.
Sadr partisans and many other Arabs seek refuge in the gun, the tribe, and the Divine because they do not find either personal solace or political meaning in being citizens of an Iraqi state that honors their rights and spells out their responsibilities. The bond of citizen-state relations is badly broken.
Arab citizens everywhere resort to tribal, religious and regional identities because their modern state's laws and institutions have not ensured the critical basic needs of its citizens in three key areas: material needs, political accountability and participation, and manifestation of a credible, common national identity. When you need a job in the Arab world, you do not go to the Labor Ministry, but to your cousin. When you need to confront your own government, you do not go to Parliament with draft legislation, but to your sacred shrine with shoulder-fired missiles. When you need a mediator to defuse a crisis, you do not seek out politicians or civil society leaders, but your most holy man.
Tensions inside Iraq are partly due to the country's imprecise, fluctuating relations with key external powers such as the United States, Israel, Iran, Turkey and Syria, many of which interfere in internal Iraqi affairs, creating a chronic cycle of cross-border tensions.
This simultaneous manifestation of all five modern Arab crises in Iraq highlights how difficult it will be to achieve the sort of stability, democracy and progress that all Iraqis desire and deserve. Not a single Arab country to date has adequately resolved any of these five crises in a sustainable manner. None has seriously attempted to resolve the core weakness that underpins them all: the fact that the Arab citizenry in every country has never had an honest opportunity to define the broad parameters of statehood, or the more technical issues related to promoting political representation and accountability, cultural and ethnic pluralism, and realistic balances in areas such as religion and secularism, gender roles and rights, state power vs. individual rights, and central government vs. provincial authority.
Iraq suggests that the chronic crises of the modern Arab world will not be resolved by foreign armies or local militias. Yet, ironically, Iraq may turn out to be the first modern example of an Arab country whose citizens had the opportunity to define their basic national institutions and values. No existing power structure in any Arab country was established by the freely expressed will of the majority of its own citizens. All reflect the decisions of former colonial powers, or their chosen local elites, or native groups and officers that seized power after independence.
The answer to the crises of the Arab world is not to perpetuate their underlying causes - foreign armies, local autocrats, populist demagogues, rampant human despair, fragile national institutions. The answer is in granting the Arab people the opportunity to exercise their right of self-determination - once and for all to define their own state and national structures, devise responsive governance systems, work out relations with neighbors and distant powers, and decide the most appropriate balance in their lives and lands among the tribe, the gun, the law, the state and the divine.
The urban warfare in the Iraqi city of Najaf that pitted the ragtag Mehdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr against the combined armed forces of the American and Iraqi governments has been defused for the moment. Events in Najaf mirrored the fundamental personal emotions and public political forces that drive events in the increasingly violent Middle East: a motley band of young men with personal weapons following a volatile young leader stood their ground, challenged their national government in Baghdad, and suicidally fought the strongest military power in world. The crisis was defused through the personal intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shiite religious authority in Iraq (who originally comes from Iran).
The events help us to identify the real forces that drive the lives of the Sadr loyalists and the institutions of Iraqi society. Those can be summed up as the five crises that define the modern Arab world, which I listed last week as:
1. A crisis of sustainable human development, reflected in stagnation and disparity in water, jobs, nutrition, education, health and other human needs;
2. A crisis of sensible and stable statehood, with most Arab countries having suffered civil war, rebellions, border conflicts, terror and widespread emigration;
3. A crisis of citizenship rights, with public power and force exercised by small groups of unelected, unaccountable people;
4. A crisis of competing identities, including the modern state, pan-Arabism, Islam, tribalism, ethnicity, regional affiliations, gangsterism, commercialism, democracy, resistance,
terrorism and others;
5. A crisis of coexistence and unclear relations with Israel, Turkey, Iran, the USA and other external powers.
The cumulative consequences of these five crises, as reflected in the Najaf events, are very clear for those who wish to see them:
Low, erratic human development has generated millions of distressed individual Arabs whose daily life needs are so poorly met that they will gravitate to demagogues like Moqtada al-Sadr, in a desperate, often suicidal quest for money or meaning in their depleted lives.
They and others like them have battled every government in Baghdad in modern history, including the British, the Baathists, the Americans and the interim government of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi - because the centralized state has not served them or reflected their identity and needs. US President George W. Bush and Iyad Allawi promised Iraqis democracy, and sent tanks and helicopter gunships to Najaf.
Sadr partisans and many other Arabs seek refuge in the gun, the tribe, and the Divine because they do not find either personal solace or political meaning in being citizens of an Iraqi state that honors their rights and spells out their responsibilities. The bond of citizen-state relations is badly broken.
Arab citizens everywhere resort to tribal, religious and regional identities because their modern state's laws and institutions have not ensured the critical basic needs of its citizens in three key areas: material needs, political accountability and participation, and manifestation of a credible, common national identity. When you need a job in the Arab world, you do not go to the Labor Ministry, but to your cousin. When you need to confront your own government, you do not go to Parliament with draft legislation, but to your sacred shrine with shoulder-fired missiles. When you need a mediator to defuse a crisis, you do not seek out politicians or civil society leaders, but your most holy man.
Tensions inside Iraq are partly due to the country's imprecise, fluctuating relations with key external powers such as the United States, Israel, Iran, Turkey and Syria, many of which interfere in internal Iraqi affairs, creating a chronic cycle of cross-border tensions.
This simultaneous manifestation of all five modern Arab crises in Iraq highlights how difficult it will be to achieve the sort of stability, democracy and progress that all Iraqis desire and deserve. Not a single Arab country to date has adequately resolved any of these five crises in a sustainable manner. None has seriously attempted to resolve the core weakness that underpins them all: the fact that the Arab citizenry in every country has never had an honest opportunity to define the broad parameters of statehood, or the more technical issues related to promoting political representation and accountability, cultural and ethnic pluralism, and realistic balances in areas such as religion and secularism, gender roles and rights, state power vs. individual rights, and central government vs. provincial authority.
Iraq suggests that the chronic crises of the modern Arab world will not be resolved by foreign armies or local militias. Yet, ironically, Iraq may turn out to be the first modern example of an Arab country whose citizens had the opportunity to define their basic national institutions and values. No existing power structure in any Arab country was established by the freely expressed will of the majority of its own citizens. All reflect the decisions of former colonial powers, or their chosen local elites, or native groups and officers that seized power after independence.
The answer to the crises of the Arab world is not to perpetuate their underlying causes - foreign armies, local autocrats, populist demagogues, rampant human despair, fragile national institutions. The answer is in granting the Arab people the opportunity to exercise their right of self-determination - once and for all to define their own state and national structures, devise responsive governance systems, work out relations with neighbors and distant powers, and decide the most appropriate balance in their lives and lands among the tribe, the gun, the law, the state and the divine.
Friday, August 27, 2004
HITTING THE THIRD RAIL
By William Fisher
I am about to hit the third rail of American politics: Saying something less than gushingly laudatory about the 9/11 Commission.
Well, it’s actually less about the Commission than it is about the testimony of some of its members at hearings last week before a couple of committees of the House of Representatives.
The subject was ‘public diplomacy’. Translating this Washington-speak, public diplomacy consists of the things we say and do to get the world to understand and love us. More specifically, the hearings were about how the United States should reach out to the Muslim world.
The Commission’s report was absolutely right in saying that the US cannot win the battle against terrorism with the military alone, that we’re also fighting a war of ideas, and we can only win that war with better ideas. “The United States must do more to communicate its message”, the Commission’s report declares.
But what is the message? According to Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton, and Commission member Jamie Gorelick, the American message needs to be about our moral values, about how generous the American people are, about the need for better education, more libraries, women’s rights, closing the digital divide, and religious, racial and ethnic tolerance.
That’s all good stuff. But Commission members, in their scrupulous and unusual effort to remain nonpartisan, were visibly walking on political eggs to avoid any mention of the indispensable factor in the public diplomacy equation: Policy.
Yet every poll taken in the last few years tells us it is not America that is hated around the world, it is American foreign policy. And neither the Commission witnesses, nor any of the Republicans on these House committees, was prepared to discuss policy.
Only the ranking Democrats on the committees, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Rep. Tom Lantos of California, weighed in with policy rants, and even these two Democrats disagreed on many issues. US policy toward Israel, for example.
Which made the discussion about tools. The tools we should be using to influence the world: Broadcasts, exchange programs, aid to strengthen economic development and civil society, and suchlike. This is a useful discussion because, unlikely as it may seem, the country that virtually invented modern communications has not been hugely successful in the way it uses its tools.
But tools are only messengers. They don’t make the message; they simply convey it.
But trying to discuss public diplomacy without discussing foreign policy is like moving bureaucratic boxes around and persuading voters you’ve actually achieved something. It makes hearings like these even more farcical than most of what goes on in Congress.
Ever since the 9/11 Commission issued its final report, the men and women of our Congress have been running for political cover like cats on a hot tin roof. It has been seen as something approaching blasphemy to question any of the Commission’s findings and recommendations – President Bush simply couldn’t wait to get to the Rose Garden to announce he was going to appoint an intelligence czar and create a national counter-terrorism center.
The Commission should not be faulted for avoiding partisan and inevitably rancorous foreign policy debates. That’s what we elect an Administration and a Congress to do. And that’s what we have a right to expect – and aren’t getting – from our quadrennial electoral process.
What is clear is that we have many failed foreign policies and a President who won’t say so. If those are givens, why are we wasting the taxpayers’ money discussing tools?
About the writer: William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy Administration.
I am about to hit the third rail of American politics: Saying something less than gushingly laudatory about the 9/11 Commission.
Well, it’s actually less about the Commission than it is about the testimony of some of its members at hearings last week before a couple of committees of the House of Representatives.
The subject was ‘public diplomacy’. Translating this Washington-speak, public diplomacy consists of the things we say and do to get the world to understand and love us. More specifically, the hearings were about how the United States should reach out to the Muslim world.
The Commission’s report was absolutely right in saying that the US cannot win the battle against terrorism with the military alone, that we’re also fighting a war of ideas, and we can only win that war with better ideas. “The United States must do more to communicate its message”, the Commission’s report declares.
But what is the message? According to Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton, and Commission member Jamie Gorelick, the American message needs to be about our moral values, about how generous the American people are, about the need for better education, more libraries, women’s rights, closing the digital divide, and religious, racial and ethnic tolerance.
That’s all good stuff. But Commission members, in their scrupulous and unusual effort to remain nonpartisan, were visibly walking on political eggs to avoid any mention of the indispensable factor in the public diplomacy equation: Policy.
Yet every poll taken in the last few years tells us it is not America that is hated around the world, it is American foreign policy. And neither the Commission witnesses, nor any of the Republicans on these House committees, was prepared to discuss policy.
Only the ranking Democrats on the committees, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Rep. Tom Lantos of California, weighed in with policy rants, and even these two Democrats disagreed on many issues. US policy toward Israel, for example.
Which made the discussion about tools. The tools we should be using to influence the world: Broadcasts, exchange programs, aid to strengthen economic development and civil society, and suchlike. This is a useful discussion because, unlikely as it may seem, the country that virtually invented modern communications has not been hugely successful in the way it uses its tools.
But tools are only messengers. They don’t make the message; they simply convey it.
But trying to discuss public diplomacy without discussing foreign policy is like moving bureaucratic boxes around and persuading voters you’ve actually achieved something. It makes hearings like these even more farcical than most of what goes on in Congress.
Ever since the 9/11 Commission issued its final report, the men and women of our Congress have been running for political cover like cats on a hot tin roof. It has been seen as something approaching blasphemy to question any of the Commission’s findings and recommendations – President Bush simply couldn’t wait to get to the Rose Garden to announce he was going to appoint an intelligence czar and create a national counter-terrorism center.
The Commission should not be faulted for avoiding partisan and inevitably rancorous foreign policy debates. That’s what we elect an Administration and a Congress to do. And that’s what we have a right to expect – and aren’t getting – from our quadrennial electoral process.
What is clear is that we have many failed foreign policies and a President who won’t say so. If those are givens, why are we wasting the taxpayers’ money discussing tools?
About the writer: William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy Administration.
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