Month: March 2003

Amid all the uncertainty and second-guessing, one thing is worth remembering. Our main fear before this conflict was that Saddam might use chemical or biological weapons against our troops or Iraqi civilians. One reason for the strategy of a short air campaign and then risky troop advances was that a repeat of the 1991 strategy would have allowed Saddam free rein to use such weapons against us. The fact that he hasn’t so far is a big achievement, it seems to me. But it has meant slightly greater risks for the troops on the ground. Still the benefits are also huge in terms of saved lives and the closer we get to Baghdad, the less likely such weapons will be used, since they would backfire on the regime itself. Score one for this plan. But no plan is risk-free or perfect.

FRIEDMAN AGAIN: An elaboration of his email yesterday:

Dear Andrew,

Upon further reflection, it seems to me the argument we are having is an illuminating one and I want to continue it one more round. Maybe my use of the word “unilateral” so often was more indicative than I thought and your heated objection more revealing than you thought. Let me try to explain.

It seems to me conservative hawks are not facing up to two issues here and liberal hawks at least one. Why is it that liberals, such as myself, who were ready to support the war, so desperately wanted U.N. approval for it? It was for a couple of reasons — one that is already apparent and one that will become more apparent. First, because this is such a huge, unprecedented task, taking over a whole country half a world away, that the more international legitimacy we had going in, the more time and space we would have to do it right. I want the world, to the extent possible, rooting for us to succeed. You don’t have that feeling right now, and that has both psychological and material implications, especially if the war drags on. Second, and this comes from having lived and traveled so long in the Arab world, I wanted U.N. approval because I knew that just because many Arabs are anti-Saddam, does not mean that they are pro-American or will automatically embrace whatever we do. This is the biggest mistake the neo-cons make. They deal with a very tiny slice of the Arab world — a slice that has not only bought into our war, but also our story, a slice that also knows how to tell us what we want to hear. That is not true of the wider Arab and Moslem world, which has its own story, which may not be ours or Saddam’s. Indeed, the neo-cons, it seems to me, have always been so caught up with their sense of the justness of this war, they have not paid enough attention to the sheer complexity of the Arab world in general and Iraq particular. I wanted U.N. approval for this war because I felt that it would be easier to win the support, or acquiescence of those Arabs and Moslems who dislike Saddam and America as well. (My views on this have been deeply influenced by a documentary I have been making for the last seven months, based on travels across the Moslem world, on the real roots of 9/11. It’s running this Wednesday night on the Discovery Channel.) The longer the war goes on without the cover of U.N. approval, the more difficult it is for Arab leaders to manage their streets. (They would still be having a difficult time. even with U.N. approval, but, again, their margin of error, like Bush’s, is decreased.) This will be true even when the war is over, as we will be telling the Iraqis they have been “liberated” and many in the world, particularly the Arab world, will be telling them they have been “occupied.” The absence of U.N. legitimacy will be felt in that debate as well.

Upon reflection, I think what our argument was about was that you believe (and this seems to be true of the Administration as well) that because we have allies in this war – from the serious, such as Britain and Poland, to the absurd such as Rwanda – it is the same as having U.N. approval. Or, to put it another way, conservatives want to believe that this war is truly multilateral and that multilateral is morally the same as U.N.-approved. Andrew, it is not, and I think you make a mistake in believing that it is. Some important moral authority was sacrificed in not getting U.N. approval and there is no way around it. (We can debate how much of that failure is Bush’s and how much Chirac’s, but that is for another session.)

But, as I said, now that the war has started we have to win and winning all depends on what sort of Iraq we reconstruct. But here liberal hawks have to be honest with themselves. Gulf War II is different from Gulf War I. Gulf War I was about liberating Kuwait. It was not about nation-building. And it is much easier for America to lead a coalition whose only task was winning a war. Gulf War II is about both winning a war and nation-building. I wish we had more allies for winning the war. I wish we had many more allies for paying for the war afterwards. But, I realize, you cannot do nation-building by committee, especially in Iraq. It will require a firm hand from the top. Or, to put it another way, maybe you can do it by committee in tiny Bosnia and Kosovo, but not in Iraq. Given the problems we had with France at the U.N., I cannot imagine trying to nation-build in Iraq with them. All the factions inside would try to play off the different big powers. Yet, I still hope that the U.N. can be brought in to legitimate such a nation-building project afterwards and help to fund it. I still think that would be useful. But not to run it. This is a dilemma. I don’t know how this gets finessed. My hope is that this rebuilding task, to the extent that it is multilateralized, will be handed over to NATO — which we lead, is serious, and at the sametime has a broader legitimacy. Maybe U.N. approval and NATO forces? I don’t know. I guess it will depend on how the war goes.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. (No need to print them if you don’t want. I have my own column!) I just wanted to take this argument to its conclusion, as it was helping to illuminate my own feelings. Allbest. Tom

Many of Tom’s points are well taken. I wanted the U.N. route to work, of course, and argued for it since last August. But there’s a difference between de facto legitimacy and real legitimacy. I suppose the Arab “street” might feel better if our troops were backed by French platitudes, but I don’t want to give either entity – in Ramallah or Paris – more than minimal legitimacy. And the good faith of Paris cannot simply be left aside. If you believe, as I do, that Paris’s prime foreign policy aim is the weakening of the United States and the collapse of the Blair government, then it seems hard to figure out how they could ever be brought along. But Tom and I are in agreement about the post-war scenario. I see no problem with a U.N. presence in post-war Iraq. But the U.S. or U.K. must have operational authority for a while; and cutting France out of any economic deals with Iraq is essential. If we don’t let Paris know that there is a price to be paid for their hostility, then they will never learn. How we square this circle is going to be hard. U.S./U.K. military authority and U.N. humanitarian aid?

The setbacks the allies have suffered these last couple of days are all due to one thing: some Saddam units acting as terrorists. By pretending to surrender and then opening fire, by relocating in civilian neighborhoods, by shooting prisoners of war in the head, the soldiers apparently still loyal to Saddam are not reversing the allied advance. What they’re doing is trying to inflict sufficient damage to improve their morale and increase the costs of the invasion. They want us to fire into civilian areas; they want us to panic at a few atrocities (as in Somalia); they are counting on an American unwillingness to persevere through serious casualties. And they intend to use the Arab media and their Western sympathizers, i.e. the BBC, NYT, NPR etc., to get this message out. The lesson to learn is that we have cornered the equivalent of a rabid dog. It will fight nastily, brutally and with no compunction. Those units who will go down with this regime will not go down easily. After an initial hope that this thing could be over swiftly, I think it’s obvious by now that we’re in for a nasty fight – and the Saddamite remnants will ally with the anti-war media to fight dirty and spin shamelessly.

THE TACTICS FOR SUCCESS: But at the most important level, these remnants are also surely wrong. It’s still an astonishing fact that in a few days, allied troops are approaching Baghdad, much of the Saddamite government infrastructure in Baghdad has been pulverized, Saddam himself is severely wounded, and the momentum is clear. How seriously should we then take the reports of guerrilla-type rearguard actions? I’m not a military expert. Here’s one from the Washington Post this morning:

Military experts predicted that the resistance in the south was so disorganized and relatively small-scale that it would die out quickly. “Nothing surprising,” said retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who has played the role of the Iraqi commander in several U.S. military war games of an invasion. In those games, played to probe U.S. war plans for weaknesses, he said, “We came up with much worse.” He noted that the Iraqi attacks were sporadic and small in nature, temporarily stopping small U.S. units but hardly affecting the broad advance toward Baghdad. Getting to the capital quickly is a key U.S. objective.

The question, to my mind, is who these resisters really are. Senior Saddamites who know they could get killed when power shifts? Islamist terrorists? Opportunists? Regular soldiers? It’s extremely hard to tell; and it certainly helps reveal the difficulties ahead for governing a country where such units can melt away into residential neighborhoods. But if the government itself changes, wouldn’t the incentives for resistance shift as well? I guess we’ll know in a few days, when the battles for Basra and Baghdad get fully under way.

WHOSE WAR? I nominate a few architects: the U.N., Bill Clinton, and a few others.

NO: I didn’t watch the Oscars. I loathe those people for the most part, but I’m glad to hear that some of them actually booed Michael Moore. For relief, I watched “Billy Madison.”

A huge chemical weapons plant uncovered by U.S. troops, according to Sky News. We’ll see. My favorite line in this piece, though, is the following: “UN weapons inspectors said they are not aware of any large-scale chemical sites which could be used to make chemical weapons in Najaf.” Imagine that.

TOM FRIEDMAN REPLIES: I got hot and bothered by Friedman’s column yesterday where he invoked the word “unilateral” to describe the war against Saddam. Here’s his defense:

Woh — calm down!! I was not even thinking about the word all that much, even if I used it three times. I was thinking about the perception in France and what is so shocking to them. It is definitely perceived as the U.S., at the end of the day, acting on its own will to launch a major war half a world away. I realize we have Mongolia with us, not to mention Great Britain, and I am glad we do. But this was driven by the unilateral will of the U.S. – as Max Boot points out in his useful piece in the Post today. The most important point, for me, is that this unilateral action will find real multilateral support provided we build something decent in Iraq, which for me is the whole focus. Quite seriously, I don’t understand the sensitivity of conservatives on this issue. It seems to me that conservatives want it both ways. They want to praise Bush for deciding not to be shackled by the U.N. and France in the end, and, at the sametime, want to insist that this is still a multilateral war. This is OUR war, along with England, (maybe I should have said bilateral) and, now that it’s on, I’m glad it is. Judging from what I heard in Paris and Brussels, I am not sure I would bring this back to the U.N. The war must legitimate itself and it can, depending on what we build in Iraq. I think that task is so serious, I am not sure I want to see it shared with anyone, particularly France. I would like the U.N. to help pay for it, though, so I see a dilemma coming. Anyway, thanks for the “generally good!”

Fair enough. But I would also say this about the multilateral left. If you’re so keen on allies, it would behoove you not to ignore and insult the ones we have, while pining for those we could never get. That doesn’t usually apply to Friedman. Despite some disagreement, he’s clearly a good guy in this war.

Unmissable. Good bit:

Sunday, 8 PM Beeb. Top of the hour roundup. Keep in mind that the key stories in America have been the POW tapes, last night’s televised battle, the rapid advance, and the Muslim member of the 101st who rolled grenades into an officers’ tent. Foxis reporting a chemical factory has been discovered, and two bridges over the Euphrates have been secured.
Overview at the top of the ahhr: Heaviest fighting of the woh, and the Arab world is rallying to Iraqi cause. (The audio backing up the latter assertion is from the Iraqi foreign minister. Surely I misheard this; surely they said that “Iraqis insist that the Arab world is rallying.” I must have suffered Temporary Yank-Centric Deafness, but maybe not; the Beeb runs more Iraqi responses than any other network. While driving around on Saturday, the Beeb ran a clip from a Brit spokesman describing a battle, then ran the Iraqi blabberjaw insisting that Iraqi forces were still engaged in battle, killing the enemy, and that the Loser Zionist Rumsfeld tongue should be accursed and struck with shoes, and we should all hope that monkeys defecate in his moustache, etc. Then came a guest from Warshington, and the presenter said “so who should we believe, then?” A charitable listener would ascribe the brief, stunned pause that followed to the natural lapse in transatlantic communications.)

Or maybe not. Then there’s this:

Fourth: Oscars story. And here is the most beautiful moment of this grim day. The announcer flubs a word, and in doing so she birthed a term of surpassing perfection. She was talking about the Holeywud ectors, their deseyah not to seem out of sync with the mood of the times. Two words must have appeared in her brain simultaneously: frivolity and privileged. And so she said of the actors who declined to appear: “They fear the ceremony will appear friviledge.” Was there ever there was a better description of the lives of the Oscar celebrants, and our betters in the entertainment world? Friviledge.

Love it.

THE BBC VERSUS THE UNITED STATES: Just a smattering of emails from people shocked to hear the BBC for the first time:

I’ve watched BBC coverage from time to time in recent years (I live in New York), but have had occasion to watch it with some regularity this week as the war has begun. I know that the Beeb has been a favorite target of yours and I now understand why. While the coverage itself was informative, if somewhat tilted, what truly shocked me was a fellow named Alan George, who was trotted out as a military analyst. If they could have hired a commentator more contemptuous of the coalition’s aims, it’s hard to imagine how. This morning his remarks nearly rocked me out of bed when he suggested that the Iraqi Information Ministry’s credibility compared favorably to Washington’s and London’s.

No surprise here. Then there’s this:

I am an Emmy award-winning, documentary film producer with 30-plus years of experience on five continents. For the last two years I have been working in Europe and stuck in a hotel that has as its only English-language TV channel, BBC World. Fortunately, I have access via the Web to a far wider understanding of what’s going on in the world. I am more than appalled over BBC’s blatant and incessant propaganda; I am deeply concerned to the point of perhaps being, well, frightened. The BBC is clearly and unambiguously the most corrupt and dangerous English-language media force in the world today … Just one slice of the destruction: BBC’s propagandizing effect of fueling wider European anti-Americanism. There’s a whole lot of folks here on the Continent that think the BBC is the voice of great mid-Atlantic (read “objective, middle ground”) insight into what Americans are all about. Most people here are not so much aware that, yes, Americans and the BBC speak the same language, but that’s as far as it goes. So the propaganda, BBC propaganda, is parroted, and it spreads.

Then the latest obscenity came with the capture and shooting in the head of American POWs:

Watching BBC World Service when this remarkable utterance was made in respect of the captured US soldiers – “In a war where public opinion is as important as what happens on the field of battle today saw a true public relations disaster.” Initially I agreed – openly parading your barabarism should clarify for everyone the nature of the Baathist regime – but it rapidly became evident that in the inverted moral universe of the BBC the public relations disaster they referred to was one that affected the Coalition and the US only – it was a PR disaster that these prisoners had been captured. That some of them had been obviously executed in cold blood and the rest were being put through a course in which the Iraqi intended to break every other Geneva convention with just this small group was not something that would reflect badly on the Iraqi’s – and anyway the Iraqi disinformation minister had said that they were being treated well.

It is important to remember, I think, that the war isn’t just between the West and Saddam. There’s also a political and ideological war within the West. The anti-war crowd have lost the argument about going to war; so they are determined to win the case during and after it. They want this war to be regarded as a disaster. And it’s up to the rest of us to fight back, expose them, and keep people focused on reality, not pro-Saddam and anti-Western spin. I need your help in this, so keep those press clips coming. Blogs are another weapon. We should use them.

A Freudian slip from ITN.

THEY JUST LOVE SADDAM: The Palestinians, of course. But the flipside of this is actually quite good. Without Saddam’s sponsorship of Palestinian terror, the leaders might actually have some incentive to reach a peace agreement.

SPIN AND SQUIRM: Here’s a piece from Australia, upping the ante on what a “victory” would have to look like to justify war:

The failure of our leaders’ efforts to sell this war raises the threshold of defining a satisfactory outcome. Victory must be total. It must uncover huge stocks of chemical and biological weapons. It must avoid significant civilian and – on our side – military casualties. Iraq must become a democracy where centuries of ethnic and religious rivalry can be settled by talking. Its territorial integrity must be preserved. There must be no humanitarian tragedy.

It’s a good sign that the appeasers are beginning to ratchet up their demands. It means that some of the obvious ones are in danger of being met.

Here’s their headline: “Iraqi broadcasts a ‘war crime.'” Why the quotation marks? There is no question that torturing, murdering and parading POWs is a war crime. Yet a British newspaper spins for barbarity.

The pictures on al Jazeera are Danny Pearl revisited. Cowardly, evil, depraved: and the fact that al Jazeera is broadcasting them shows exactly how unhinged the enemy has become. Ditto the news of the American serviceman who attacked his fellow soldiers. Two sides of the same Islamist coin. If these barbarians actually believe this kind of behavior will weaken American resolve, they just don’t know Americans. But it’s a good indicator that this war isn’t over yet. And the worse may yet be to come.

AFFLECK’S STYLIST, I MEAN CONSCIENCE: Are you as sickened as I am by the prospect of the Oscars tonight? My dismay at these half-brained actors is slowly beginning to morph into outright contempt. But at least Ben Affleck is being completely genuine when he talks of his preparations for tonight:

Donning an anti-war totem is also popular. Among the actors who have said that they will wear anti-war badges are nominees Day-Lewis, Adrien Brody, Pedro Almodóvar Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore as well as veteran star Dustin Hoffman. Yet even that decision has been difficult for some actors to make. Ben Affleck is among those who has apparently not yet made up his mind. Instead he has announced that the final decision will rest with his stylist.

Yep, his stylist. They don’t sell their souls in Hollywood any more. They have publicists to do that for them.

WHILE SOLDIERS DIE: Some New Yorkers do this:

“I always feel so energized after I go to these,” said a 30-year-old artist who goes by the name Machine. Lithe and statuesque, Machine was wearing sequined hot pants, fishnet stockings, shiny platform heels and a huge feathered headdress. His sign said, “Baby, I am the bomb.” Around him were drag queen nuns and two people wearing stars-and-stripes-patterned suits and dancing on stilts. A dozen women in red, white and blue bobbed wigs with matching skin-tight outfits and huge missile-shaped strap-on dildoes fanned out to the street, flouncing and dancing as they sang “Show me the way to the next little war,” to the tune of the Doors’ “Alabama Song.”

This, while barbarians are abusing captured soldiers.

Another generally good column by Tom Friedman today. He’s smart enough to realize that the French have badly miscalculated. But what’s with this repetitive use of the term “unilateral”? He uses this untruth three times (my italics):

There are three fronts in this Iraq war: one in Iraq, one between America and its Western allies, and one between America and the Arab world. They are all being affected by this unilateral exercise of U.S. power … 9/11 posed a first-order threat to America. That, combined with the unilateralist instincts of the Bush team, eventually led to America deploying its expanded power in Iraq, with full force, without asking anyone… For now, though, Europeans are too stunned by this massive exercise of unilateral U.S. power to think clearly what it’s about.

This is not a legitimate difference of opinion. It is simply not true. At the very least, this war is militarily trilateral – fought with the only European nation with any defense capacity worth using, Britain, and with some Aussies. There are some thirty countries or so behind the war, 21 of which are in Europe. Four of the six largest economies in the world support it – the U.S., Japan, Britain and Italy. When Friedman says that the U.S. did this “without asking anyone,” again, it’s simply not true. How long did we spend at the U.N.? If president Bush’s address last September to the U.N. wasn’t asking for support, then what is? As I say, it’s possible to believe that this war should have somehow been multilateral (however quixotic that might be). But it’s not possible to pretend that it has been simply unilateral. There’s simply no way in which that word can be used to describe this war. Tom knows this. So why lie? And what else do you call it when someone obviously knows the truth and says the opposite?

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: “Peace demonstrators in France stab 2 Jewish boys.” – from the Jerusalem Post. Yes, “peace” protestors. When will we stop using this term to describe anarchists, fascists and anti-Semites?

Well, we’re getting used to the phrase “Shock and Awe.” Herewith an invitation to readers to send in examples of how anti-war writers, poobahs, activists, bloggers, et al are trying to spin the liberation of Iraq into something that proves them to have been right all along. First up, a piece by Johnny Freedland (why do I know all these guys?) in the Guardian. The apparent success of “Shock and Awe” is, you see, a result of the “peace” protestors. If it hadn’t been for the patchouli paraders, no one in the Pentagon would have thought of minimizing civilian casualties! It’s a beaut:

The campaign began not with “shock and awe” but a subtler knife, aimed at the surgical decapitation of Saddam Hussein and his regime. One night’s bombing of Baghdad lasted no more than an hour. The terrifying spectaculars threatened by Rumsfeld and the boys, reminiscent of the fireworks of the first Gulf war, only materialised last night. There could be a stack of explanations for that initial deployment of the short, sharp blow… The US might have wanted to avoid a wave of worldwide revulsion. A series of tight, well-aimed strikes at the regime would have confounded the global fear of colossal Iraqi civilian casualties. It’s as if Washington had heard the peace movement’s objection to this war – that too many innocents would die – and was attempting to heed it. (Now the US can, at least, say it tried its best, but that it didn’t bring instant results.)

Notice the amazing assumption that Washington hawks would actually have wanted to slaughter thousands needlessly, if unrestrained by the Krazy Kantians in the streets. Other examples of “spin and squirms” gratefully received.

They’re racing in.