Now What?

The back issues of Foreign Affairs magazine - the subscription was a gift from a friend - sit on the top shelf of the one of bookcases here in Hollywood. They should go - what seemed incisive and urgent then is not now, and if you do want to look up anything in those issues you can use Google. Most of it is online. But they look impressive sitting there. Of course those who would be impressed never visit here, and those who do, if they notice them, are indifferent, or a bit frightened. Who reads such things?

But here in the Washington Monthly it seems that Kevin Drum wants those who do read such things to go back a few months and reconsider the Stephen Biddle piece, Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon. The idea there is that comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam are useless - Iraq is a communal civil war, not a nationalist war, and counterinsurgency and "Iraqization" won't work. Things are different now.

So what will work to produce some sort of stable and functioning government there? It may be too much to ask that it be pro-American, but maybe "not hostile" would be good enough. Can we have something there that works well enough that the region is marginally stable and we can bring most of our people home? Or some of them? Will this have an end, or at least a winding down?

That leads to the current issue of Foreign Affairs, where all sorts of people - Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, Marc Lynch, and Drum himself - have a roundtable on the issue of "what will work" to fix this mess. Now what? Everyone has their say.

The following discussion of who said what, and who's full of crap and who isn't, is here.

Drum's view -

Hitchens aside - since he appears not to have even read the roundtable pieces and instead simply banged out a random column on Iraq - the most remarkable thing about the responses is that everyone seems to agree that (a) we're virtually powerless to affect events in Iraq and (b) none of the proposals by the roundtable authors are remotely practical. Despite this, none of my fellow responders support even a phased and prudent withdrawal of US troops. Apparently we are to stay in Iraq forever despite the inability of anyone to produce a plan for victory - or even bare stability - that inspires even minimal confidence.

That's probably why the pile of Foreign Affairs magazine frightens visitors here. Careful and clever thinkers look at we've managed to get ourselves into in Iraq, and see no good alternatives. Better to read People or Popular Science.

As for Kevin Drum, he favors "a prudent withdrawal" - because no one has proposed "an even remotely credible plan" that would allow American troops to regain control of the low-level civil war that seems to be humming along over there. When there is no possible way to "regain control" that anyone can see, hope against hope is stupid. It could work, you never know, verges on the delusional.

And Drum adds a twist. He says he had been reluctant to bring this up. Everyone says if we haul out of there they'll really have a civil war, and it'll go regional. But there's a problem if we stay -

The worst that could happen is a full-blown Iraqi civil war with the US military caught in the middle. At that point, our options would be to either take sides and become a tacit party to a near genocide, or stand by helplessly while Iraqis slaughter each other in our presence. That would be devastating not just for Iraq and the Middle East but for America's prestige and its future freedom of action as well.

But it seems the second alternative is happening already, as everyone on Wednesday, July 12, was citing the "Riverbend" web log from Baghdad, discussing events of the previous Sunday here -

The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a car bomb was set off in front of a Sunni mosque people in the area visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately. They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen.

Drum adds this -

Actually, the reason for the non-response is probably pretty obvious: the Shia-controlled Interior Ministry had no interest in stopping the massacre and the US military wasn't capable of stopping it. They "sat by" because there was nothing they could do to prevent the fighting and no one wanted to be caught in the middle of a full-blown (though neighborhood-sized) civil war when it finally broke out.

Despite everything, I'd be in favor of staying in Iraq if anyone could provide a plan for success that seemed even minimally credible. But no one has. That leaves only one sensible option.

Sensible? Cowardly? Morally wrong? Morally right? Take your choice.

And what is success? This particular war, sold to us all on some nifty slight-of-hand, had as its aim what was both pretty much impossible and clearly mad - invade and occupy a country that had nothing to do with the terrorism of that September almost five years ago, strip away its government and destroy its infrastructure, and fashion a friendly government there, to prove something or other. So we won't leave until we've "won" - and that seems impossible. We should stay if... what? Define what success is here.

And Drum didn't quote this from "Riverbend" - who lost a good friend ("T") last Sunday -

Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run,' but the fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes - what's being done about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them - Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed - unless they want to join in with murder and rape.

Buses, planes and taxis leaving the country for Syria and Jordan are booked solid until the end of the summer. People are picking up and leaving en masse and most of them are planning to remain outside of the country. Life here has become unbearable because it's no longer a 'life' like people live abroad. It's simply a matter of survival, making it from one day to the next in one piece and coping with the loss of loved ones and friends - friends like T.

It's difficult to believe T is really gone... I was checking my email today and I saw three unopened emails from him in my inbox. For one wild, heart-stopping moment I thought he was alive. T was alive and it was all some horrific mistake! I let myself ride the wave of giddy disbelief for a few precious seconds before I came crashing down as my eyes caught the date on the emails - he had sent them the night before he was killed. One email was a collection of jokes, the other was an assortment of cat pictures, and the third was a poem in Arabic about Iraq under American occupation. He had highlighted a few lines describing the beauty of Baghdad in spite of the war... And while I always thought Baghdad was one of the more marvelous cities in the world, I'm finding it very difficult this moment to see any beauty in a city stained with the blood of T and so many other innocents.

And that's only a small part of it. Now what?

The Third War

Not Iraq. Not Afghanistan. Hamas kills two Israeli soldiers and takes another captive, and Israel took the bait, and attacked Gaza and the Palestinian war was on again. The Palestinians had tossed out the old guard and elected this Hamas government, the folks who don't recognize Israel's right to exist and will not disavow terrorism as a political tool. And the war goes on - the Palestinians face the prospect of no water, food or electricity - the elderly and the children die first - and you wonder what the Hamas government was thinking. Like this wouldn't happen? They really do love this martyr thing. And what was Israel thinking? It's the one soldier and nothing else matters?

Wednesday, July 12, the second front opened. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon joined in - cross-border strike and abduction of two Israeli soldiers, followed by Israel rolling the tanks into southern Lebanon, or the first time in six years, and bombing this and that. The United States is saying Syria and Iran is behind Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and they are the real villains. The Lebanese government in Beirut is saying, hey, we never had much control over those Hezbollah folks and don't have much say in southern Lebanon at all, so back off. Israel bombs the main runway at Beirut International, so commercial flights get diverted.

We used to broker peace in the area, twisting arms on both sides, or all sides, to get things calmed down a bit. We don't do that any longer. That's a Jimmy Carter thing, not Bush. We were all behind the Palestinian elections last year - we spread democracy - but they elected the wrong people, and we want them gone. We gave up on that sissy mediation stuff long ago. And now this.

And they're all mad, as here, where in southern Lebanon the reaction to the new kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and the resulting Israeli bombs dropping elects this -

"Look, we're used to it - 25 years, 26 years it's been like this," Hassan Qaryani, a 21-year-old butcher from Burj Rahal, said of the airstrikes. The kidnapping, he said, was "like a crown on my head ... as soon as I heard the news I was overjoyed. It was like Italy winning the World Cup."

In the southern suburbs of Beirut, people handed out candy in the streets and set off fireworks. Fireworks also were set off on the airport road, snarling traffic.

Looking at it logically, there's this -

As for Israel, I have no idea what they think their response is going to accomplish. They're retaliating in exactly the way that the most militant members of Hamas and Hezbollah were hoping for, and it's unlikely that there's any exit strategy for them that actually improves their internal security or their strategic position. We've been down this road a dozen times before, after all.

Logic fails.

And how could thing have gone so wrong in the last six years? We called out the Axis of Evil, and we took care of one of them, sort of, and it's all turned to dust.

Take North Korea.

Maybe, as Randal Mark suggests here, doing nothing is sometimes a good idea -

In reality, North Korea, although highly militarized, is a small, impoverished, Third World dictatorship that is comprehensively outclassed, in technological and numerical terms, by the U.S. and its allies. The U.S., on the other hand, currently spends almost as much on military force as the rest of the world put together, and has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over.

There are no conceivable circumstances whatsoever in which North Korea could substantively attack the U.S., or any ally the U.S. chooses to shield, without facing its own certain, immediate, and total destruction. There is no plausible future scenario in which this situation could change.

... The only situation in which North Korea (or Iran, or Saddam's Iraq) might attack the U.S. in the face of their own certain national destruction would be in the case of utter desperation, having been driven to the wall by U.S. economic and political pressure, or following an act of military aggression doubtless mendaciously dressed up as a defensive "preemptive" attack. It is up to the U.S. to make sure this doesn't happen (though in practice it is highly unlikely the Chinese would allow it to, in the case of North Korea). In the meantime, however, confrontation merely confirms to the North Korean people that their government's claims of an external threat are true.

Arthur Silber here -

Here, then, is the simple policy solution to the "problem" of North Korea for the U.S. president: do nothing. It's also known as masterly inactivity. In due course, the nature of the North Korean regime will change, whether that change is peaceful or violent. It will probably change a lot more quickly if North Korea's economy has more wealth and wider links with the outside world, rather than being further isolated by demonization and sanctions on top of the constraints imposed by its own government. It will also help if Kim's attempts to seek nationalist legitimacy by claiming an external threat aren't regularly demonstrated true by Washington. In the meantime, North Korea isn't going to attack anybody so long as Kim knows that the result would be his own destruction.

In its essentials, this is exactly what I proposed some time ago with regard to Iran, as well as in connection with a non-interventionist foreign policy more generally. But of course, doing nothing is anathema to the political leader, for whom action, and today the more destructive and bloodier the better, is considered to be synonymous with and absolutely required for any achievement whatsoever. Yet on many occasions, in foreign policy and in many other circumstances in life, the bravest and best course is to keep a watchful eye should serious dangers arise, but to refrain from acting until it is absolutely necessary.

But we do things. Israel does too. "Doing something" is the name of the game now. It's manly or something.

Overwhelming force will keep people in line, except when it doesn't. The "other side" in all these cases is supposed to give in, and they're just not doing it. They're ruining everything. So you apply more force, and they get even more difficult and try to embarrass you, or worse. So you apply more force, and they still won't play their part right, refusing the role assigned. So you apply more force, and they fight back harder, in nasty, sneaky ways. So you apply more force, because you know that works. And they laugh in your face and capture and kill your soldiers and get their nukes or whatever. So you apply more force.

Someone has the concept wrong here.

Legal Ripples

Okay, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration's proposed military tribunals at Guantánamo were illegal. What was proposed was a joke, and had nothing to do with fairness. Because we ratified and became part in the Geneva Conventions, that made them our law too, and the rules for trying the captured are clear there. So be it. And a lot of the discussion of the secondary effects of that concerned how, if the Geneva Conventions are our law too, our interrogation techniques have to change - no more waterboarding, stress positions, forced nudity and sexual humiliation or dogs (discussed here). The reason the tribunals were shot down as important as that they were.

And there's more. Wednesday, July 12, the curiosity was that people were beginning to realize that other things in the Supreme Court decision might mean the whole warrantless wiretapping business was going to have to be abandoned. But it wasn't because of any treaty we entered into. It was that the court found a particular line of legal reasoning the administration was using, underlying much of what they're up to, was just bogus.

Now the NSA spying program clearly violates the FISA Act, which requires the government to get warrants before it places wiretaps on "US persons." They didn't do that. They said they didn't have to. And there were two reasons - the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed just after the World Trade Center fell and the Pentagon was hit, overrides FISA, as the congress "implied" the president could authorize anything he thought might help in the battlefield - and then, too (and two), the whole FISA law is an unconstitutional infringement of the president's inherent power as commander-in-chief, as the congress can't pass any law to tell him how to manage any war, day to day.

Perhaps they shouldn't have argued those precise two points in the Hamden case, as Jack Balkin explains -

The Court ... held that "Neither [the AUMF or the Detainee Treatment Act] expands the President's authority to convene military commissions. ... [T]here is nothing in the text or legislative history of the AUMF even hinting that Congress intended to expand or alter the authorization set forth in Article 21 of the UCMJ."

....What about the President's inherent powers under Article II as Commander-in-Chief? Don't they override Congressional limitations? No, said the Court in Hamdan in a footnote: "Whether or not the President has independent power, absent congressional authorization, to convene military commissions, he may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers."

So if the Authorization for Use of Military Force didn't override the Uniform Code of Military Justice and you had to have real trials, not this kangaroo court crap, for the same reason it doesn't override the FISA Act. Different things, but they were justified the same way. And if Congress can limit the president's Article II powers when it comes to military tribunals, it can do the same thing when it comes to domestic surveillance, and, in fact it did, in 1978 and amended many times.

The administration is still arguing the two points (here) - implicit authorization from congress they just didn't know they were giving, and congress has no constitutional power to stop it no matter what laws they feel like passing in their spare time - standing by the arguments the Supreme Court said were bogus.

It seems they haven't though this through. Curious.

But there are a lot of curious things in the air.