Matthew Duss

Friday Guitar Blogging

Bill Frisell.

Definitely Maybe...Success!

Anthony Cordesman's column in today's Washington Post summarizes the findings of his recent CSIS report on security in Iraq (which has been hailed in the usual corners as evidence that "We're Winning!"). This passage is emblematic of the report's qualified and hesitant predictions of something very much like success:

Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism.

The military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different. The United States and its allies are winning virtually every tactical clash in both countries. In Iraq, however, al-Qaeda is clearly losing in every province. It is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. There is a very real prospect of coalition forces bringing a reasonable degree of security if decisions such as Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's announcement Friday to extend his militia's cease-fire six months continue over a period of years.

Right. There is the "very real prospect" of "reasonable degree of security" if the leader of Iraq's version of Hezbollah continues to cooperate. Do I really need to go any further? The fact that people like Charles Krauthammer are seizing upon this as evidence of success shows both how well they've been able to transform the Iraq debate into an argument over tactics, and how far they've been willing to climb down from the war's original goals, all while attacking Democrats for being defeatist.

Brand New Iraq, Only Six Hundred Billion Dollars! Who Wants To Play?

Continuing to man the "Surge Success!" booth at the Bush Country Fair, neocon carnie Reuel Marc Gerecht looks at the bright side of life:

Regarding the Iraq war and jihadism, two facts stand out. First, if we make a comparison with the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-89, which was the baptismal font for al-Qaeda, what's most striking is how few foreign holy warriors have gone to Mesopotamia since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

What's impressive about this is that for years the Bush administration and the neocon apparat relentlessly inflated the numbers of foreign fighters in Iraq, first in an effort to deny the genuinely indigenous, nationalist nature of the insurgency (after first denying the insurgency's existence for over a year), and then to tie Iraq to the broader war on terror by over-representing al-Qaeda's role there (something which only caused al-Qaeda's stock to rise in the Middle East). Don't you remember, these guys had a whole "flypaper" theory worked out, in which terrorists from throughout the region would be attracted to Iraq, and, immediately after getting off the bus ("Baghdad! Just like I pictured it! Minarets, and everything!") stumble into a hail of American machine-gun fire. There was just one tiny flaw in the plan: It was bollocks. Jihadis didn't just come and die, though many of them did, they came and learned. They experimented, refined, innovated, and generally took great advantage of the terrorism laboratory with which the U.S. provided them. Though fewer mujahideen traveled to Iraq than did to Afghanistan, thanks to the power of the internets they have been able to have an immeasurably greater effect in the dissemination of terrorist propaganda, methods and tactics throughout the world.

Gerecht:

A second striking fact about Islamism and the Iraq war is that the arrival of foreign holy warriors is deradicalizing the local population -- the exact opposite of what happened in Afghanistan...If bin Ladenism is now on the decline -- and it may well be among Arabs -- then Iraq has played an essential part in battering the movement's spiritual appeal.

First, I suppose if you define "radicalism" as "Wahabbism", this is true. But, of course, Wahabbism was never popular in Iraq, at least not until the U.S. got there. As for Islamism, it is now effectively the law of the land. Second, I simply can't keep up with how often these guys seem to redefine success in Iraq. Understand that Gerecht himself previously wrote that "As long as [bin Laden] lives, we have lost the war against radical Islamic terrorism" ...and now he celebrates the possible, maybe, could be, you never know, decline of "bin Ladenism" as a benefit of the Iraq war. (I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis are grateful to have contributed to this possible, maybe, could be, you never know outcome.) While on a darkly satirical level I appreciate that Gerecht's new line of pro-war bull directly contradicts previous lines of pro-war bull, it must be understood that there is simply no way to draw a smiley face on all this, no calculus that can justify the costs of this debacle, no way that the Iraq war ends up as a net positive for the region, or for the U.S. Any productive debate over where to go from here must begin with that.

(cross-posted to TAPPED)

Low-Hanging (Organic, Of Course) Fruit

Over at The Corner, one of Jonah Goldberg's emailers responds to Goldberg's latest iteration of his argument that torture is no big deal by suggesting that Jonah "go read The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It will tell you all you need to know about torture." Jonah fires back:

I've read the Gulag Archipelago. It didn't tell me everything I needed to know about torture, it told me almost everything I needed to know about the evil of the Soviet Union. And, guess what? The comparison between the United States and the Soviet Union is idiotic and slanderous.

Now, obviously, one doesn't have to believe that the U.S. and the USSR were morally equivalent in order to be deeply troubled now by the U.S.'s operating a global network of secret prisons wherein suspects are held indefinitely without charge and tortured. One just has to be decent. What brings Jonah's sanctimonious response to the level of farce, however, (or, as Frank Zappa used to say, "out of the realm of mere mumbo-jumbo and into the world of mumbo-pocus") is the fact that Goldberg, as you may know, recently published a book in which he compared American liberalism to fascism, spending over 200 pages arguing that liberals are the political heirs of Naziism. So, while he considers it reprehensible, unacceptable, out-of-bounds to compare the Soviets' use of secret prisons and torture to the U.S.'s use of secret prisons and torture, he thinks the contention that Adolf Hitler was a non-smoking vegetarian who believed in unity just like liberals who support national health care, shop at Whole Foods, and also believe in unity is not only permissible, but compelling enough to justify an entire book. The sad thing is, I really doubt Goldberg would admit any inconsistency here.

(cross-posted to TAPPED)

Flawed and Ugly

Reuel Marc Gerecht celebrates President Bush's creative destruction:

Although the White House often seems bedeviled by the task of defining "victory" in Iraq, it really isn't that hard. Flawed and ugly as it is, Iraqi democracy stumbles forward. The Shiite and Sunni Arabs are slowly establishing representative political arrangements within their own communities that allow some diversity of opinion.

Leaving aside the fact that as this "victory" as Gerecht defines it, in addition to obviously representing a monumental climbdown from each and every one of the numerous justifications previously offered for the war, does not actually add up to "an Iraqi state" as much as to "a series of armed militia communities we're going to call Iraq," was this outcome really worth 4,000 American dead, over 28,000 wounded, and, by the end of 2008, some $600 billion in American treasure? Was it worth over half a million Iraqi dead, many times that maimed, and some 3 million displaced? Was it worth creating an open source laboratory for terrorists to develop and sharpen their tactics against the most technologically advanced military in the world, enabling them disseminate those tactics around the world via internet? Was it worth losing a thousand dollars at poker just to win twenty at blackjack?

The remainder of the article takes neocon propaganda to the level of farce. Gerecht tries to put the best possible face on President Bush's flawed, ugly, and incoherent Middle East policy, which stumbles forward as courtiers like Gerecht trail behind, praising the monarch for his genius and assuring him that the blighted wasteland he surveys is a verdant oasis.

(cross-posted to TAPPED)

Bottom-Up Reconciliation

Ha'aretz has this story on a potentially significant meeting between Palestinians and Israelis in Hebron:

The heads of the largest Palestinian clans in Hebron met with the Kiryat Arba local council chief and prominent leaders of the Jewish community in Hebron on Wednesday in what both sides described as a meeting of reconciliation, Army Radio reported.

Sheikh Abu-Hader Ja'abri, the head of a prominent Palestinian clan and a relative of a former mayor of Hebron, and the head of the Abu Sneinah clan, Haj Akram Abu-Sneinah met with the head of the Kiryat Arba settlement council, Zvi K'tzubar, and the heads of Jewish settlers in Hebron.

The two sides declared their goal was to restore peace and security to the city, known to Jews as Hebron and to Palestinians as Al-Halil.

"We don't see you as settlers but as residents," Sheikh Ja'abri, the head of a prominent clan in Hebron, is quoted as telling his Jewish interolocutors. "Hebron is ours just as it is yours."

This is encouraging, and necessary. Considering the great significance of Hebron in Jewish history, it's unthinkable that Hebron should be prohibited for Jews, as it was under the Jordanian occupation, in the event of any settlement pull-out.

It must be noted that this sort of rapprochement, based on a mutual recognition of claims, is opposed by extremist elements on both sides of the conflict, neither of whom recognize the others' historic ties to the land, both of whom relentlessly appeal to the memory of the fallen to refuse any accommodation and to discredit moderates. An important difference, however, especially in regard to Hebron, as I reported last December, is that Palestinian extremism is condemned by Americans, whereas Israeli extremism is often praised and funded by them.

Yesterday's Terrorist is Today's Linchpin

International Crisis Group has just published a new report entitled "Iraq’s Civil War, the Sadrists and the Surge." It's findings are summarized thusly:

The dramatic decline in bloodshed in Iraq – at least until last week’s terrible market bombings in Baghdad – is largely due to Muqtada al-Sadr’s August 2007 unilateral ceasefire. Made under heavy U.S. and Iraqi pressure and as a result of growing discontent from his own Shiite base, Muqtada’s decision to curb his unruly movement was a positive step. But the situation remains highly fragile and potentially reversible. If the U.S. and others seek to press their advantage and deal the Sadrists a mortal blow, these gains are likely to be squandered, with Iraq experiencing yet another explosion of violence. The need is instead to work at converting Muqtada’s unilateral measure into a more comprehensive multilateral ceasefire that can create conditions for the movement to evolve into a fully legitimate political actor.

As I wrote last week, understanding Muqtada al-Sadr's contribution to the drop in violence, and the deal that was made to secure his cooperation, is essential in order to grasp the truth behind the preposterous "success of the surge" that John McCain and other conservatives are selling. It's not that there hasn't been a drop in violence, there has been, but given the new reality of Iraq as a warlord state (a reality which the surge strategy has ratified), presenting this drop in violence as anything like the fulfillment of the stated goals of the surge (to say nothing of the original goals of the Iraq project as a whole) is deeply and shamefully dishonest.

We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists

Newsweek reports on Muqtada al-Sadr's role vis-a-vis the surge:

Gen. David Petraeus has been deservedly praised for tamping down violence in Iraq, but an unlikely character deserves some credit—Sadr. Five months ago the firebrand cleric ordered his followers to lay down their arms, and they've largely obeyed...American officers now talk about "splitting the seams" within the Shiite militia—working with moderates in the group to isolate the radicals, similar to the strategy adopted to tame the Sunni insurgency.

[...]

The hope is that this kind of bottom-up reconciliation will push senior Sadrist leaders toward moderation, too...But things could just as well turn out badly. If Sadr achieves the rank of ayatollah, he will be a heavyweight political, as well as religious, authority—and he'll have a leaner, more loyal militia at his disposal. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has drawn comparisons between Sadr's movement and Hizbullah, which does not bode well for long-term stability.

I think this gets it backwards in a couple of ways. First, Muqtada's already a heavyweight political authority; what he lacks are the religious credentials that would really allow him to play for all the marbles. This is why he has resumed his religious training to achieve the rank of marja al-taqlid, a formally accredited source of religious emulation, authorized to issue binding decisions regarding appropriate Islamic practice for his followers.

Second, recognizing that very little that's occurring in Iraq right now "bodes well" for long-term stability, I think Ryan Crocker's comparison of the Sadr movement to Hizbullah is actually an argument in favor of engagement with Hizbullah (and Hamas). For years the U.S. tried to ice Sadr out of the process, refusing to see that he spoke for a genuine constituency. So he played spoiler, steadily accruing political capital both through his opposition to the U.S. occupation and his movement's delivery of services and security that the occupation failed to provide. General Petraeus was wise enough to perceive, as U.S. and Israeli leaders have unfortunately not been in regard to Hizbullah and Hamas, that, the Sadrist's constant rhetoric notwithstanding, there were elements within the movement which could be negotiated away from violence and toward political accommodation, however halting and precarious that accommodation. This isn't to say that the arrangement that the U.S. seems to have worked out with Sadr is ideal, it certainly is not, just that it's precisely the sort of deal that we're supposed to believe is out of the question in regard to Hizbullah and Hamas (and Iran, for that matter). 

More importantly, though, understanding the deal the U.S. has made with Sadr is key to understanding what the surge strategy is really all about, and why treating the surge as representing any kind of "success" for the Iraq war is a bit like celebrating winning twenty dollars at blackjack right after having lost a thousand at poker. In exchange for Muqtada's cooperation in reigning in the more extreme elements of his militia and his help in reducing violence from staggering to merely unacceptable levels, the U.S. has effectively ratified his control of a large, formerly mixed areas of Baghdad, secured his position as arguably Iraq's most popular Shi'ite political leader, and consigned thousands of Iraqis to life under a proto-state regime of religious fundamentalism that is about as authoritarian as Saddam's was, but with the added bonus of no liquor, no movies, and with women forced to veil themselves and and prohibited from skilled professions. And, as a double-bonus: This regime is oriented toward Shi'ite Iran.

Friday Guitar Blogging

Dinosaur Jr. (Who will soon be visiting Israel.)