Incompetence - Continued
While President Bush is off making political speeches, trying to cash in on the fifth anniversary of September 11, and sending Cheney to Meet the Press to deny reality and attack Democrats as appeasers, we are continually besieged with report after report of incompetence by his administration in the war against terrorism The Washington Post reported today that the chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq, Col. Pete Devlin, recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there.
Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.
Devlin offers a series of reasons for the situation, including a lack of U.S. and Iraqi troops, a problem that has dogged commanders since the fall of Baghdad more than three years ago. Not only are military operations facing a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, but also local governments in the province have collapsed and the weak central government has almost no presence.
One view of the report offered by some Marine officers is that it is a cry for help from an area where fighting remains intense, yet which recently has been neglected by top commanders and Bush administration officials as they focus on bringing a sense of security to Baghdad. An Army unit of Stryker light armored vehicles that had been slated to replace another unit in Anbar was sent to reinforce operations in Baghdad, leaving commanders in the west scrambling to move around other troops to fill the gap.
Of course this is just the Sunni dominated portion of Iraq’s Western desert. So lets look at the Shiite area in the south where Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army are becoming increasingly powerful. Sadr poses a significant dilemma for the Bush administration and Iraq's fragile government. Though Sadr and his followers hold more seats in Iraq's parliament than any other faction, their attitude toward the U.S.-led occupation remains belligerent. They participate in government, but they remain outsiders, keenly aware that their authority is derived from their independence and their opposition to the occupation.
The ongoing evolution of Sadr from populist cleric to guerrilla leader to political kingmaker is emerging as a core challenge to U.S. visions of stability in Iraq. He's a question mark that many analysts say needs to be dealt with immediately and delicately.
"Sadr is a work in progress," said Phebe Marr, a leading expert on Iraqi politics. "He is volatile, an opportunist and dangerous. But he is also popular and has grass-roots support among an important slice of the population. He and his movement need to be dealt with carefully and skillfully before he can take permanent root. "He is too powerful now to take him on frontally."
Senior U.S. military officials are starting to share this view. Once dismissed by Bush administration officials and U.S. generals as irrelevant to Iraq's future, Sadr is increasingly seen as a man who has the power to either implode Iraq or keep it together, even as his militia continues to defy the authority of the Iraqi government and its U.S. backers. As sectarian violence ravages Baghdad and other parts of the country, Sunni Muslims accuse Sadr's Mahdi Army of operating death squads under the mantle of Islam.
Today, Sadr controls 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament and four ministries. All of Sadr's portfolios revolve around providing key services, such as health and transportation. They give him the ability to funnel resources to supportive constituents and boost his popular base. During the protracted negotiations over who would become prime minister after elections in January, Sadr reluctantly supported Nouri al-Maliki, also a Shiite, to head the government.
Many observers argue that at a time when the Bush administration and Sadr aren't talking, one political option is to try and wean poor and lower-middle-class men such as these from the streets.
"The best way to do it is to give them jobs, not in the security system, but where they could be active in the economy," said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Maliki government spokesman, referring to the Mahdi Army militiamen. "Once they get an income, I don't think they will follow an ideology or become fundamentalist and extremist."
Other observers say the Iraqi government and its U.S. benefactors need to undercut Sadr's social services network by providing health, education and other services, as well as establishing the rule of law.
Somehow this doesn’t seem to be high on our list of priorities. Bush’s basic approach to diplomacy is to never talk to our enemies; never attempt to understand their motivation other than to repeat platitudes about how they hate our freedom. Addressing the futility and sense of humiliation felt by millions of third world people is not something we try to counter, with the exception of the laughable Karen Hughes. She is just a higher-ranking politico just like the young inexperienced Republican staffers we sent to Iraq in the days following the invasion.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is showing increasing sign of exploding. The Bush Administration’s decision to attack Afghanistan and dispose the Taliban, who were harboring Al Qaeda, was a decision the US had to make. It was supported by a great majority of US citizens and received strong support from most of the world. But it has the same faults as the Iraq disaster. Instead of concentrating on the resurrection of Afghanistan, where our actions were supported by most of the population, Bush decided to use the terrorism ploy as an excuse to attack Iraq. This resulted in shifting our resources away from Afghanistan. Events today show how weak the Afghan government is despite billions in aid, and how unable it is to create a functioning and democratic country. Introducing democracy to countries where it did not exist is no easy task, but it is one that the Bush Administration was ignorant of or grossly underestimated. This inability to plan beyond military adventure has crippled Iraq and as is now becoming apparent doing the same in Afghanistan.
A massive car bomb recently killed 16 people in Kabul. In the southern provinces that spawned the Taliban movement, open warfare has resumed after four years of relative quiet. Insurgents are battling NATO troops and employing suicide bombs. Thousands of villagers have fled their homes, to escape both insurgent violence and NATO air strikes. Schools have shut down, and development projects have stopped.
NATO's commanding general, citing the surprising toughness of the insurgents, called last week on member nations to provide as many as 2,500 additional troops for the south. But the proposal faces questions in European capitals about the risks involved. Since taking responsibility for the south from U.S.-led forces at the beginning of August, NATO has lost 35 troops.
Even in the north and west, where the insurgency has hardly reached, many people today express dismay with the government of President Hamid Karzai. They say it remains weak and distant, that public services and protection are grossly inadequate, and that commanders from the war against Soviet troops in the 1980s often hold extortionate sway over daily life.
For the first four years after Karzai came to office in late 2001, such harsh criticism was rare. The influx of foreign support -- more than $3.5 billion in U.S. economic aid alone -- brought a sense of progress. More than 6 million children were enrolled in schools; crews built a new highway between the two major cities, Kabul and Kandahar; and the economy grew at a brisk 15 percent a year.
But the high expectations that democracy would deliver jobs and development has gradually turned to bitter disappointment as reports of corruption spread and the massive doses of foreign aid seemed to produce few tangible benefits for the poor.
The strong initial welcome for U.S. and other foreign troops in the country also began to chill. There were complaints about air strikes on village compounds that killed civilians. As the insurgency erupted this year, with more firefights and bombings in civilian areas, Afghans began blaming the foreign soldiers for exposing them to danger.
Many Afghan Muslims also began to equate modernization with immorality. They mistrusted the emancipation of women enshrined in the new charter and disapproved of Kabul restaurants selling alcohol to foreigners. Earlier this year, an Afghan man was nearly sentenced to death for converting to Christianity.
With the insurgents exploiting government weaknesses and public frustrations, a variety of experts have warned that the achievements of the past five years -- and even the stability of the Afghan government -- could be in serious jeopardy.
Barnett R. Rubin, an American expert on Afghanistan, conducted a broad survey here last month. In a resulting report, "Still Ours to Lose: Afghanistan on the Brink," sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, he wrote that many Afghans had lost faith in the Karzai government and that some felt conditions in the country were "ripe for fundamentalism."
Salvaging the situation, Rubin wrote, will require a major increase and redirection in foreign aid, serious reforms in the justice and police systems, and the shutting down of Taliban support networks in neighboring Pakistan -- none of which seems likely to happen in the near future.
Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.
Devlin offers a series of reasons for the situation, including a lack of U.S. and Iraqi troops, a problem that has dogged commanders since the fall of Baghdad more than three years ago. Not only are military operations facing a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, but also local governments in the province have collapsed and the weak central government has almost no presence.
One view of the report offered by some Marine officers is that it is a cry for help from an area where fighting remains intense, yet which recently has been neglected by top commanders and Bush administration officials as they focus on bringing a sense of security to Baghdad. An Army unit of Stryker light armored vehicles that had been slated to replace another unit in Anbar was sent to reinforce operations in Baghdad, leaving commanders in the west scrambling to move around other troops to fill the gap.
Of course this is just the Sunni dominated portion of Iraq’s Western desert. So lets look at the Shiite area in the south where Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army are becoming increasingly powerful. Sadr poses a significant dilemma for the Bush administration and Iraq's fragile government. Though Sadr and his followers hold more seats in Iraq's parliament than any other faction, their attitude toward the U.S.-led occupation remains belligerent. They participate in government, but they remain outsiders, keenly aware that their authority is derived from their independence and their opposition to the occupation.
The ongoing evolution of Sadr from populist cleric to guerrilla leader to political kingmaker is emerging as a core challenge to U.S. visions of stability in Iraq. He's a question mark that many analysts say needs to be dealt with immediately and delicately.
"Sadr is a work in progress," said Phebe Marr, a leading expert on Iraqi politics. "He is volatile, an opportunist and dangerous. But he is also popular and has grass-roots support among an important slice of the population. He and his movement need to be dealt with carefully and skillfully before he can take permanent root. "He is too powerful now to take him on frontally."
Senior U.S. military officials are starting to share this view. Once dismissed by Bush administration officials and U.S. generals as irrelevant to Iraq's future, Sadr is increasingly seen as a man who has the power to either implode Iraq or keep it together, even as his militia continues to defy the authority of the Iraqi government and its U.S. backers. As sectarian violence ravages Baghdad and other parts of the country, Sunni Muslims accuse Sadr's Mahdi Army of operating death squads under the mantle of Islam.
Today, Sadr controls 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament and four ministries. All of Sadr's portfolios revolve around providing key services, such as health and transportation. They give him the ability to funnel resources to supportive constituents and boost his popular base. During the protracted negotiations over who would become prime minister after elections in January, Sadr reluctantly supported Nouri al-Maliki, also a Shiite, to head the government.
Many observers argue that at a time when the Bush administration and Sadr aren't talking, one political option is to try and wean poor and lower-middle-class men such as these from the streets.
"The best way to do it is to give them jobs, not in the security system, but where they could be active in the economy," said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Maliki government spokesman, referring to the Mahdi Army militiamen. "Once they get an income, I don't think they will follow an ideology or become fundamentalist and extremist."
Other observers say the Iraqi government and its U.S. benefactors need to undercut Sadr's social services network by providing health, education and other services, as well as establishing the rule of law.
Somehow this doesn’t seem to be high on our list of priorities. Bush’s basic approach to diplomacy is to never talk to our enemies; never attempt to understand their motivation other than to repeat platitudes about how they hate our freedom. Addressing the futility and sense of humiliation felt by millions of third world people is not something we try to counter, with the exception of the laughable Karen Hughes. She is just a higher-ranking politico just like the young inexperienced Republican staffers we sent to Iraq in the days following the invasion.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is showing increasing sign of exploding. The Bush Administration’s decision to attack Afghanistan and dispose the Taliban, who were harboring Al Qaeda, was a decision the US had to make. It was supported by a great majority of US citizens and received strong support from most of the world. But it has the same faults as the Iraq disaster. Instead of concentrating on the resurrection of Afghanistan, where our actions were supported by most of the population, Bush decided to use the terrorism ploy as an excuse to attack Iraq. This resulted in shifting our resources away from Afghanistan. Events today show how weak the Afghan government is despite billions in aid, and how unable it is to create a functioning and democratic country. Introducing democracy to countries where it did not exist is no easy task, but it is one that the Bush Administration was ignorant of or grossly underestimated. This inability to plan beyond military adventure has crippled Iraq and as is now becoming apparent doing the same in Afghanistan.
A massive car bomb recently killed 16 people in Kabul. In the southern provinces that spawned the Taliban movement, open warfare has resumed after four years of relative quiet. Insurgents are battling NATO troops and employing suicide bombs. Thousands of villagers have fled their homes, to escape both insurgent violence and NATO air strikes. Schools have shut down, and development projects have stopped.
NATO's commanding general, citing the surprising toughness of the insurgents, called last week on member nations to provide as many as 2,500 additional troops for the south. But the proposal faces questions in European capitals about the risks involved. Since taking responsibility for the south from U.S.-led forces at the beginning of August, NATO has lost 35 troops.
Even in the north and west, where the insurgency has hardly reached, many people today express dismay with the government of President Hamid Karzai. They say it remains weak and distant, that public services and protection are grossly inadequate, and that commanders from the war against Soviet troops in the 1980s often hold extortionate sway over daily life.
For the first four years after Karzai came to office in late 2001, such harsh criticism was rare. The influx of foreign support -- more than $3.5 billion in U.S. economic aid alone -- brought a sense of progress. More than 6 million children were enrolled in schools; crews built a new highway between the two major cities, Kabul and Kandahar; and the economy grew at a brisk 15 percent a year.
But the high expectations that democracy would deliver jobs and development has gradually turned to bitter disappointment as reports of corruption spread and the massive doses of foreign aid seemed to produce few tangible benefits for the poor.
The strong initial welcome for U.S. and other foreign troops in the country also began to chill. There were complaints about air strikes on village compounds that killed civilians. As the insurgency erupted this year, with more firefights and bombings in civilian areas, Afghans began blaming the foreign soldiers for exposing them to danger.
Many Afghan Muslims also began to equate modernization with immorality. They mistrusted the emancipation of women enshrined in the new charter and disapproved of Kabul restaurants selling alcohol to foreigners. Earlier this year, an Afghan man was nearly sentenced to death for converting to Christianity.
With the insurgents exploiting government weaknesses and public frustrations, a variety of experts have warned that the achievements of the past five years -- and even the stability of the Afghan government -- could be in serious jeopardy.
Barnett R. Rubin, an American expert on Afghanistan, conducted a broad survey here last month. In a resulting report, "Still Ours to Lose: Afghanistan on the Brink," sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, he wrote that many Afghans had lost faith in the Karzai government and that some felt conditions in the country were "ripe for fundamentalism."
Salvaging the situation, Rubin wrote, will require a major increase and redirection in foreign aid, serious reforms in the justice and police systems, and the shutting down of Taliban support networks in neighboring Pakistan -- none of which seems likely to happen in the near future.
posted by John Weiss at 5:22 PM
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