The Dish

“I am in complete agreement with your sentiments as expressed in today’s blog. However, I think in listing the ” two fundamental reasons for war against Iraq” you have neglected a third. By any reasonable definition, the US has been at war with Iraq since 1991 at a significant cost in both blood and treasure. Iraq’s misbehavior not only offended our morals, but the stability of the world system of interdependent nation states. Iraq uniquely in post-war times invaded a sovereign state, absorbing it by illegal annexation accompanied by significant rape, murder, and pillage. The matter of Kuwait was unresolved, as indicated by the Chairman of every Security Council meeting leading up to our invasion. Like its unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, this action had not only caused untold death and destruction in the region, but produced worldwide recessions of incalculable cost. The Persian Gulf region has been recognized as an area of vital US interests since FDR. Presidents of both parties since the end of WWII have reinforced this fact. Jimmy Carter made it official policy in his State of the Union speech in 1980; Bush 41 went to war in 1991 in part because of this policy. Bill Clinton and nearly the entire US Congress made “regime change” a logical extension of it.

We also have a less concrete, but no less important, interest in maintaining the credibility of the Security Council. As its leading member, our own credibility is inextricably linked to it. No genocidal fascist dictatorship should be allowed to take us into a war in an area of vital national interest and be seen to get away with it. What may be called our “realpolitik” interests in invading Iraq are not as sexy as WMD’s and morality, but are crucial. They constitute the principal difference between Vietnam and Iraq; without being able to demonstrate that they exist, we have no business committing our troops to war. I have already come to the conclusion that a Kerry presidency would be more likely to finish the job in Iraq successfully, for a variety of reasons. My principal concern about his victory is that future presidents may take the lesson that any use of force is political suicide, even when the case is so obviously justified as with Iraq.”

THE WRONG ENEMY: “I have been a regular reader of your blog for the last six months. Before I proceed, it’s best to give a brief ID. I’m Bangladeshi and Muslim, educated in the Uni of London O- and A-level system back home, have a graduate degree from the US and now studying for another degree at Oxford Uni. I’ve been an ardent Anglophile for as long as I can remember and grew up on Dickens, Tennyson, Owen, Maugham, Greene. It’s a stunning thing to think sometimes that I am in the uni where my favorite writers studied – Greene, TE Lawrence, Penelope Lively. I’m as Westernized a Muslim as you’ll find from my neck of the woods, and a deeply concerned citizen of the Muslim world.

But I was against the Iraq war from the start. Let me tell you something, Andrew. Iraq was never the problem. I don’t know why the right bought into the Bush logic for a war against IRAQ. The problem with the Muslim world lies in one place above all others – the Saud dynasty in Saudi Arabia and its worldwide network of radical theocratic scholars. Why the right pushed for an irrelevant war against an irrelevant dictator is beyond me. If you guys had pushed for a democracy and freedom in the heart of the Middle East, you could NOT have made a better case for that than the two staunchest, most undemocratic of American friends – Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

I am from Bangladesh, and I have as much first-hand experience as anybody else of what these people are doing to us. The Bengalis have always been a highly tolerant nation – Bengali Muslims share many cultural traditions with our fellow Bengalis who are Hindu in religion but the same ethnicity and who speak the same language. Two of my dearest friends are a Hindu girl and a Christian guy. Many many of us have this same broadly tolerant mindset.

But over the last 20 years, the Saudis have established a galaxy of madrassas all over the Muslim world, and also in Bangladesh. In 20 years, the whole political discourse has changed from one of tolerance, and a debate between the market vs the state, into something far more insidious. The tone is now one of who can claim Islam more loudly. The would-be theocrats are trained, taught and financed by the Saudis, by the Egyptians, by the Yemenis. Their pockets are deep enough to survive even minimal electoral support. But because of the zealotry and organization of this vocal minority, their influence on national politics has been deeply corrupting. But even so, the VAST majority of Bengalis have no time for their bullshit. No one wants to live in an Iran or a Saudi, NO ONE.

Andrew, if you and your right-wing co-religionists had spent a fraction of your energy in campaigning against the Sauds and Mubarak, you’d have done all of the world an immense favour. I don’t know why Bush pushed for Iraq. Maybe it was revenge for his dad. Maybe it was the neocons’ greed for oil security. Maybe it was their desire to safeguard Israel for future generations. I don’t know. Maybe it was a combination of all three. But I honestly cannot bring myself to believe that, as their PRINCIPAL motive, they wanted to set up an exemplary democracy in the heart of the Middle East. That may have been an incidental by-product. But it never was, could never be the major issue at hand. If democracy and freedom was the primary factor, there were candidates closer to home to work on.

The Iraq war and its sordid mismanagement has messed up the prospects for real change in the Middle East for God knows how long. I know that as a developed country, the US is addicted to Saudi oil and wants to avoid upsetting those sick scumbags. But nonetheless I am urging you, begging you, those of you who have influence in the policy circles of Washington to shift attention to the real destabilizers among us. The Sauds, the Mubaraks.

For once, forget about stability. Even a popular Islamist government in Saudi or Iraq or Egypt will have to barter with the West, will have to sell its natural resources for its own coffers. So please push for real democracy, not for more client states. And please please make sure that your clients don’t become so repressive, so devoid of political expression that all the suppressed voices export their terror to far-flung places, Bangladesh or Indonesia or Pakistan or Philippines. These people are destroying us.

Naipaul wrote about the Saudi influence in Pakistan, in Indonesia as long ago as 1979. All that shit is now coming to pass. Please stop the Saudis. Please free Egypt.”

Glenn Reynolds does an amazing job but he is still mortal, and I’m delighted he’s decided to take things a little less strenuously in the near future. He’s too valuable to be lost to exhaustion. But he raises an interesting question about blogging that deserves a little scrutiny. It can become grueling. I just checked how many words I have written for the blog this year and it’s already approaching 200,000 words. If I wrote four books in five months, I’d rightly give myself a vacation. And I’d be rolling in it. But, as it is, I’m already figuring out what to say for tomorrow’s blog, absorbing the news in this terribly grueling time, and writing (last week) five separate columns/reviews. And I’ve been at this now for almost four years – almost every day. I begin to wonder what the half-life of a blogger is. It doesn’t seem to have affected my health (the hernia wasn’t from typing) and my latest bloodwork was good enough to keep me off HIV meds for another few months, at least. (This June, it will be three years since I took any medications at all. My immune system has not declined in that period and the virus has barely rebounded. A miracle of sorts, which I attribute entirely to my mother’s prayers). But life suffers – along with relationships, being able to drink after 8 pm, exercize and reading for – imagine this – pleasure. At this point, the reason for blogging has gotten a little lost. And then I realize we are at war. And I realize my own pathetic part in it is trying to think about it, fight it with words, and that this blog is a small part of that wider effort. At some point, I will have to give it up or take a long break. But when that is, I’m not so sure.

The Vatican weighs in on the abuse scandal. Yep, the Vatican. At least we didn’t cover this up for decades, did we?

FROM BAGHDAD: One Iraqi isn’t letting the abuse scandal get him down:

Just to say Hellow and to let you know that I am still around. This latest fiasco smells to me. It smells really bad. Abuses there seems to have been, but who took the photos, and the timing, isn’t it too convenient? But you must know this: All this has not shaken my support for the liberation one little bit, nor my absolute conviction of the justice and nobility of the “Project”. If some of you have seen fit to appologize to us about the behaviour of some of your “scum”; we must also appologize to you for the behaviour of so many of our “scum”.

There are, indeed, questions. Who took the photos? How did they get out? Why were digital cameras allowed in Abu Ghraib in the first place? We will, I suppose, find out.

Here’s a tale of a former Saddam-tormented grunt finding new life and inspiration in the training that the U.S. military is orchestrating. If you need cheering up, read the whole thing.

News spreads of what Virginia’s legislature has done to prevent even private contracts between members of gay marriages. Social conservatives, as usual, are silent. Those who profess to oppose the persecution of gay citizens, while wanting to “defend” marriage from homosexuals, have an obligation to speak out. Will they?

Worth looking at their assessment of who is ultimately responsible for Abu Ghraib.

The question I have asked myself in the wake of Abu Ghraib is simply the following: if I knew before the war what I know now, would I still have supported it? I cannot deny that the terrible mismanagement of the post-war – something that no reasonable person can now ignore – has, perhaps fatally, wrecked the mission. But does it make the case for war in retrospect invalid? My tentative answer – and this is a blog, written day by day and hour by hour, not a carefully collected summary of my views – is yes, I still would have supported the war. But only just. And whether the “just” turns into a “no” depends on how we deal with the huge challenge now in front of us.

THE CASE STANDS – JUST: There were two fundamental reasons for war against Iraq. The first was the threat of weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam Hussein, weapons that in the wake of 9/11, posed an intolerable threat to world security. That reason has not been destroyed by subsequent events, but it has been deeply shaken. The United States made its case before the entire world on the basis of actual stockpiles of dangerous weaponry. No such stockpiles existed. Yes, the infrastructure was there, the intent was there, the potential was there – all good cause for concern. Yes, the alternative of maintaining porous sanctions – a regime that both impoverished and punished the Iraqi people while empowering and enriching Saddam and his U.N. allies – was awful. But the case the U.S. actually made has been disproved. There is no getting around that. The second case, and one I stressed more at the time, was the moral one. The removal of Saddam was an unalloyed good. His was a repugnant, evil regime and turning the country into a more open and democratic place was both worthy in itself and a vital strategic goal in turning the region around. It was going to be a demonstration of an alternative to the autocracies of the Arab world, a way to break the dangerous cycle that had led to Islamism and al Qaeda and 9/11 and a future too grim to contemplate. The narrative of liberation was critical to the success of the mission – politically and militarily. This was never going to be easy, but it was worth trying. It was vital to reverse the Islamist narrative that pitted American values against Muslim dignity. The reason Abu Ghraib is such a catastrophe is that it has destroyed this narrative. It has turned the image of this war into the war that the America-hating left always said it was: a brutal, imperialist, racist occupation, designed to humiliate another culture. Abu Ghraib is Noam Chomsky’s narrative turned into images more stunning, more damaging, more powerful than a million polemics from Ted Rall or Susan Sontag. It is Osama’s dream propaganda coup. It is Chirac’s fantasy of vindication. It is Tony Blair’s nightmare. And, whether they are directly responsible or not, the people who ran this war are answerable to America, to America’s allies, to Iraq, for the astonishing setback we have now encountered on their watch.

THE INEXCUSABLE: The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong. I sensed the hubris of this administration after the fall of Baghdad, but I didn’t sense how they would grotesquely under-man the post-war occupation, bungle the maintenance of security, short-change an absolutely vital mission, dismiss constructive criticism, ignore even their allies (like the Brits), and fail to shift swiftly enough when events span out of control. This was never going to be an easy venture; and we shouldn’t expect perfection. There were bound to be revolts and terrorist infractions. The job is immense; and many of us have rallied to the administration’s defense in difficult times, aware of the immense difficulties involved. But to have allowed the situation to slide into where we now are, to have a military so poorly managed and under-staffed that what we have seen out of Abu Ghraib was either the result of a) chaos, b) policy or c) some awful combination of the two, is inexcusable. It is a betrayal of all those soldiers who have done amazing work, who are genuine heroes, of all those Iraqis who have risked their lives for our and their future, of ordinary Americans who trusted their president and defense secretary to get this right. To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu Ghraib to happen – after a year of other, compounded errors – is unforgivable. By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments. They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called to account. Shock has now led – and should lead – to anger. And those of us who support the war should, in many ways, be angrier than those who opposed it.

WINNING THE WAR: But we must still win. This isn’t about scoring points. It should not be about circling partisan wagons. And it must not mean withdrawal or despair. Much has also gone right in Iraq. Saddam is gone; the Kurds are free and moving toward democratic rule; in many areas, self-government is emerging. The alternatives to regime change, we should remember, were no alternatives at all. Civil war is neither inevitable nor imminent. Before the Abu Ghraib disaster, there were encouraging signs that Shiites were themselves marginalizing al Sadr’s gangs; and that some responsible Sunnis could be integrated into a new Iraq. We have time yet to win over the middle of Iraqi opinion to the side of peaceful democratic change. How to do it? We need to accelerate elections; we need to show the Arab and Muslim world that we will purge our military and intelligence services of those who perpetrated these obscenities and those responsible for them; we must spend the money to secure the borders, police the power-lines, and bring measurable prosperity to a potentially wealthy country; and we have to eat even more crow to get the U.N. to help legitimize a liberation that most Iraqis now view as an intolerable occupation. To my mind, these awful recent revelations – and they may get far worse – make it even more essential that we bring democratic government to Iraq, and don’t cut and run. Noam Chomsky is wrong. Abu Ghraib is not the real meaning of America. And we now have to show it – in abundance. That is the opportunity this calamity has opened up. And then, when November comes around, we have to decide whether this president is now a liability in the war on terror or the asset he once was. How he reacts to this crisis – whether he is even in touch enough to recognize it as a crisis – should determine how the country votes this fall. He and his team have failed us profoundly. He has a few months to show he can yet succeed.

Here’s Sy Hersh’s latest account of what went wrong at Abu Ghraib. The truly horrifying thing is that the worst is yet to come. The photos we have seen are, apparently, benign compared to what we have not yet seen. I am sorry I cannot be more upbeat. But nothing that the enemy could dream up could have done us more harm in the eyes of the world than what some in U.S. uniform have done to the United States’ credibility and honor. We have no option but to withstand it and carry on. We owe that to the Iraqi people, to the world and to ourselves and our own security. But the damage is immeasurable; and, ultimately, the president must take responsibility. You could feel the psychological barometric pressure drop this weekend in Washington. Maybe the rest of the country won’t react the same way. Or maybe there will be a time-lag in which the country as a whole realizes it has lost confidence in this administration as profoundly as Washington now has. But every time I try to think of a way in which this is not catastrophic to the cause of democracy and peace in the Middle East, I come undone.

Kagan and Kristol endorse Iraqi elections by September 30. It’s an idea worth trying. I think they’re right that we are at a tipping point at which support for the war at home will plummet unless we change direction fast.

Roger Simon has an excellent post about an Iraqi who sees this differently, and who has some personal experience in Abu Ghraib. Don’t miss it.