Do you miss me when I’m away? Work has been a bit of a distraction lately. Work, and oh yes, life, too. It still is, actually, but I want to weigh in on some recent commentary about Bush, Kerry and the war in Iraq.
As any frequent reader already knows, I’m solidly with the Air Marshal on the critique of Bush. He’s a crappy president, and spreading innuendoes about Kerry and smearing administration critics is his only hope for reelection. I’ll obviously have to be the one who starts pushing Kerry stock around here as an alternative, but that’ll have to wait until I have more time. For starters, however, I don’t think Kerry can do any worse than Bush.
Setting aside the credibility and competence of the current administration, we as a nation need more debate about the merits of the war in Iraq independent of this November’s election. It may be true, as the Foreign Minister once asserted, that Democrats will use every anecdotal failures in Iraq to attack Bush, but it’s also true that this administration has disdainfully used patriotism in an attempt to stifle dissenting opinion (one of many electoral hypocrises). The greatest foreign policy shift this nation has undergone in nearly half a century, and Bush still isn’t public about the decision.
The neocon vision for remaking the Middle East (which, incidentally is Bush’s only remaining justification for the war in Iraq) is flawed. I recently read an admittedly biased but thought-provoking op ed about this issue, but I’ll only summarize the quoted analysis of Steven Metz, director of research at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, here:
He [Metz] noted that the neocons’ campaign was predicated on three fundamental assumptions: that an outside force, such as the United States, can play a decisive role in removing obstacles to democracy in the Middle East; that a democratic Middle East is worth the costs and will be more amenable to U.S. interests and less supportive of fundamentalist terrorism; and that a democratic Iraq can be a catalyst for democracy in the region. None of these assumptions, he suggested, is grounded in fact. Outside nations played important but not decisive roles in the democratization of Latin America and Eastern Europe, Metz noted. New and fragile democratic governments in the Middle East might reinforce themselves by pandering to their citizens and adopting anti-American positins. And there’s no telling if a democratic Iraq — if one comes to be — can serve as a model for its neighbors. “I hope this is true,” Metz said. “But we have not debated the analysis — whether this is true . . . We’ve gone barreling into this based on assumptions.”
As a former member of the Armed Services, I fear where this chain of logic is going to take us. For an alternative, read this excellent analysis from Stratfor Weekly before they update the post (their next sample post might also be excellent, but I don’t know if it will pertain to New Strategies in Iraq). I think this article will be of particular interest to the Foreign Minister, as it shares his concerns for the region but follows them to a different conclusion. Basically, it suggests that we refocus on our true mission (defeating terrorism, not reformatting Iraq) and, while keeping forces in Iraq, consolidate our troops in the south and west and cut our losses elsewhere. Personally, I think it’s an insightful solution to our mess. But whatever your opinion, I think it’s exactly the kind of idea that needs to be on the table, exactly the kind of debate we should be having, and exactly the kind of debate that the Bush administration wants to avoid. They’d rather not consider the reality of our situation at all. Shame on them.
Responding to a recent post by the Foreign Minister, I fully agree tht 9/11 changed the nature of the game. However, that doesn’t mean that Bush is the best guy to QB it. And there is no way in hell that W. would have gotten reelected (”8 mediocre years of W. presidency” my ass) in the absence of a 9/11. He’s got nothing now to run on except his status as a war president, and that’s also why he’s going to lose.
Believe.
