Month: September 2004

Several people have told me to look at this site – but its biases are so blatant and so hostile to the liberation, I’m not going there. Here’s an FT story that contains some interesting info:

From April 5 to September 12, slightly over five months, 3,186 Iraqi civilians, men, women and children, died as a result of either terrorist incidents or in clashes involving US-led multinational forces.
Baghdad has proved most bloody with 942 deaths. Some 674 died in Anbar province, home to Falluja and Ramadi, and then Najaf with 528, according to a neatly maintained file in the operations room.

So the murders are by no means confined to Anbar province – but are mainly in the capital. You can see why in this heart-wrenching story from the NYT today. I don’t have data on the rate of these murders or killings or accidents. But extrapolate the death rate to a country as big as the U.S. and you’ll get 35,000 civilian deaths in five months or so: two 9/11s a month. Does anyone think that that level of fear, anarchy and insecurity is conducive to a transition to democracy? I should reiterate. Some would use these stats to denigrate the war effort as a whole. That is not my point. My point is to offer some kind of criticism to help make this liberation work. I never believed it would be easy. But it seems to me that the lack of security in that poor country is making our goals all but impossible. How do we beef up that security? That’s the question.

HANSON ON IRAQ: VDH’s latest essay is a really good one; and I couldn’t be more in agreement about the necessity of hanging in there and turning Iraq around. But even VDH concedes that there is “increasing chaos in the country,” and says:

It is true that parts of Iraq are unsafe and that terrorists are flowing into the country; but there is no doubt that the removal of Saddam Hussein is bringing matters to a head. Islamic fascists are now fighting openly and losing battles, and are increasingly desperate as they realize the democratization process slowly grinds ahead leaving them and what they have to offer by the wayside. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and others must send aid to the terrorists and stealthy warriors into Iraq, for the battle is not just for Baghdad but for their futures as well. The world’s attention is turning to Syria’s occupation of Lebanon and Iran’s nukes, a new scrutiny predicated on American initiatives and persistence, and easily evaporated by a withdrawal from Iraq. So by taking the fight to the heart of darkness in Saddam’s realm, we have opened the climactic phase of the war, and thereupon can either win or lose far more than Iraq.

Sure. But do we have the means to accomplish what we have engaged upon? Do we have enough troops? Have we botched the critical political element? Why do polls show overwhelming hostility to American forces among Iraqis? Isn’t Bush ignoring Iran? Why have we not sealed the borders? Why have we been unable to disburse even a tiny fraction of the money apportioned to reconstruction? These are the critical questions; and it’s telling that Hanson doesn’t address them. Neither does the president. My guess is that we are soon going to have to make a huge new investment of manpower and money to wrench Iraq away from a looming civil war or chaos. We will have to do this because we didn’t do it a year and a half ago. It angers me that it has taken this administration over a year to find that out.

Another classy tactic from Bush’s GOP:

Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November. The literature shows a Bible with the word “BANNED” across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word “ALLOWED.” The mailing tells West Virginians to “vote Republican to protect our families” and defeat the “liberal agenda.”

Ban bibles? We’ve heard this kind of bile from the far right before, but the incorporation of it into official GOP propaganda is new to me. Ed Gillespie, the GOP chairman, won’t disown it. Let’s put this as plain as I can: telling people that a small minority are trying to persecute Christians, attack their families and ban bibles is an old tactic. I’ll just leave it at that.

Rick James went very gently into that good night. Vicodin, valium, cocaine, meth, and five other drugs. And that isn’t what killed him!

Peaktalk weighs in – on the side of worry. My own view is that we’re risking long-term destabilization in Iraq for Bush’s re-election prospects. But I have no way of proving that; and I guess it just shows that I have lost confidence in this administration to a) tell the truth about Iraq and b) win this war. They’re going to have Allawi here next week to tout progress. Will that help him at home? Or is it all for Bush? And what if Baghdad blows up while he’s over here? Meanwhile, I haven’t tracked down solid numbers for civilian casualties over the past six months in Iraq. Anyone out there who can help?

But not if we keep up our current half-assed, under-funded war on terror. Mark Helprin explains why here. Money quote:

To coerce and punish governments that support terrorism, until they eradicate it wherever they exercise authority. To open for operations any territory in which the terrorist enemy functions. To build and sustain the appropriate forces and then some as a margin of safety, so as to accomplish the foregoing and to deter the continuing development of terrorism. To mount on the same scale as the military effort, and with the same probity, the necessary civil defense. To reject the temptation to configure the defensive capabilities of the United States solely to the War on Terrorism, as this will simultaneously stimulate China’s military development and insure that we are unprepared for it. These should be our aims in this war.
They are neither modest, nor without risk, nor certain to succeed-by their very nature they cannot be. But they are a model of discipline and restraint when compared to the infinitely open-ended notion of changing the nature of the Middle East, changing the nature of the Arabs, changing the nature of Islam, and changing the nature of man. No army can do that. No army ever could.

I don’t agree with all of this, but it’s stimulating nonetheless.

I’ll be on the Chris Matthews syndicated sunday show this weekend and also on Howie Kurtz’s “Reliable Sources” on CNN on Sunday. Also: Hitch and I will reprise our double act on Tim Russert’s CNBC show next week. Stay tuned.

NOW, MANITOBA: Marriage for everyone slowly expands in Canada. Outbreaks of incest, bestiality and widespread increases in divorce do not seem to be occurring.

“Disclaimer: I’m a kerry supporter. As a statistics student…Slate’s polling deal is about as unscientific as you can get. This is the kind of shit I study at school part-time and do for a living full-time. I strongly urge you not to rely too much on Slate’s summary. In short, it is comparing apples to oranges. By aggregating the data like that they are compounding the errors in their data rendering any sort of grand prediction pointless. The differences in methodologies between the polls (the phrasing of the questions alone!) makes aggregating the data like that USELESS. The best I can say is that the electoral votes that they consider “solid” are indeed that…the rest of it is nonsense.
I believe Bush is ahead but seeing a modest and predictable dissipation of his convention bounce which was both strong and entirely within the parameters most professionals predicted. Best guess is that Bush has and will maintain a statistically significant edge of about 5-7 points going into the debates….barring outside forces. The good news for Bush is that with every passing day the ranks of the undecided decline and the polls actually become somewhat more accurate.
Interesting but useless fact: At this point in 2000 Al Gore maintained a lead over Bush that is almost identical to the lead Bush currently enjoys over Kerry.”

Our Iraq debate is bearing fruit. Belmont Club counters my worries. Greg Djerejian argues back here. I don’t think there’s much doubt that the U.S. has been scaling back offensive operations against the insurgents for the past couple of months. The fact that, even then, casualties have increased is worrying. Then there’s the possibility that this pause will make re-taking Fallujah and other trouble spots that much more difficult and bloody. Money quote from Greg:

That question is, if we really needed to get back into towns like Fallujah–would we be losing more troops now than we did back in April because the insurgents have re-grouped, strengthened, and are becoming (that dreaded, over-used word so loved by the New York Times!) more “sophisticated”? Unfortunately–and this goes more to Sully’s point than Wretchard’s–I fear the answer is yes… Also, folks, a capital city like Baghdad is critical in all of this. You can’t have foreign nationals, willy-nilly, being kidnapped from the Mansour neighborhood smack dab in the morning on their way to work. You can’t have myriad suicide car bombings slaughtering new Iraqi police recruits seemingly every day. You can’t have the effing perimeter of the Green Zone unsecured at this late juncture. Not only is it critical to exert real control over the capital as a strategic matter–it’s also of hugely symbolic import–for us, for the international community and, yes, for the insurgents.

Amen. Losing control of critical parts of Baghdad is, er, not a good sign.

The Iowa Markets poll shows a Bush break-out as well. I guess Harris and Pew are off. Slate’s summary is helpful.

WHAT IS THE TRUTH ABOUT IRAQ?: Belmont Club looks on the bright side: they don’t seem to buy the Newsweek argument that the insurgency is reaching a new level of sophistication. And they argue that the U.S. casualties are concentrated in a few places within the Sunni triangle. And so the status quo endures. I sure hope they’re right – and the security collapse in the Green Zone, trouble in the north, Zarqawi’s continued strength and the remaining threat from far-from-disarmed Sadrist militias is not as grave as we might expect. It is indeed very hard to figure out what is happening. But it also seems to me that military deaths may not be the best way to analyze this. After all, the White House may well have been withdrawing troops from sensitive areas in order to minimize casualties in the run-up to elections (perhaps prior to an attack on Fallujah in November?). And the major recent target of the insurgents has been the Iraqi civilian population. Do we have monthly figures for their deaths? Given last week, when over 130 were murdered in a few days, it’s not unreasonable to assume that things are getting worse. We sure know that almost no reconstruction aid has been disbursed – a full year and a half after liberation. If that isn’t incompetence, what is? Sid has gotten some relatively senior military guys to wring their hands. And I keep reading newspaper stories detailing how Iraqis have responded to new terror attacks by blaming the Americans. I hope Belmont Club is right; and all this other stuff is misinformation. But they haven’t convinced me yet.

ZEYAD WEIGHS IN: Meanwhile, my old reliable, Zeyad, is not sounding too optimistic. He views the rounds of violence as semi-coordinated, a fore-runner of a future power-struggle or civil war:

The most likely scenario in the event of a premature withdrawal of occupation forces is this: Sadr will move to gain control of the south and most of Baghdad, other Shi’ites will submit by intimidation. The Marji’iya will have no power to intervene unless they are willing to allow a violent civil war between the various Shi’ite factions. Iran is likely to interfere, but perhaps not directly.
At the same time, Sunni elements will move to consolidate their power over their areas. The fundamental foreign and Salafi constituent would be too weak to control any area. Each town would be virtually independent until the strongest (and most ruthless) group can control the Sunni areas north of Baghdad. The Kurdish region would break off the rest of Iraq and the Peshmerga would move to control oil fields in Kirkuk. Later, there would be a bloody confrontation between the different groups until one subjugates the others and controls the country, this would probably take years and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would die, many more would try to leave Iraq.
With this bleak scenario in mind, one can easily interpret the current pattern of violence. I am not saying this is going to happen soon, I’m only trying to understand how the various groups are thinking and how it reflects on their current actions. Of course, I may be wrong, but I am inclined to believe that this explains it. Each group wants to survive the occupation to fight for power in the future.

This, of course, indicates that the key is to insist that we are not leaving any time soon – which is obviously not what the election of John Kerry would achieve. It may be that the only way out of this mess is to stick with the man who helped make it. I have a feeling that that is what many people are now reluctantly concluding.

A ROAD FROM HELL: And if you feel like reading some harrowing reporting from the scene, try this.

I missed this Harris poll, in the WSJ today. The election is far from over. But Bush is ahead in Florida and Ohio.
UPDATE: The Pew poll shows something similar to Harris.