Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Posted here Tuesday, June 01, 2004 at 7:40:07 PM     Thinking now about what can happen in Iraq. This from www.billmon.org today Everything I've read over the past year about counter-insurgency warfare stresses the importance of staying on the offensive - of taking the fight to the insurgents. Or, as one analyst put it: An insurgent force that is surviving is probably winning. By hunkering down now, Centcom will at a minimum hand the tactical initiative to the enemy, allowing the insurgents to accelerate their campaign of intimidation and assassination against all who collaborate with the occupation and its puppets. This is from a lng posting he has done on the  conclusion that the US has actually given up, and compares it to the french in Indochina. There is of course the broader background issue of wht is the context on the global level. Just af ew thoughts.. But here are some ideas, which, after having laid them out, perhaps I can settle in to what can actually be discussed.   1. What was the strategic situation going into Iraq? Did it not include an analysis something like Brzezinski's: that the whole southern arc of Eurasia was being fought over in slow motion, and that Pakistan was crucial, and that we did not have the strategic geopolitical situation to take on Pakistan, so the Iraq war was a first step...   2. The situation of that part of the US that would support the war. Why would they? A deep fear that the US is not adept at the modern complexities, and the world was moving toward a loss of sovereignty and toward bureaucracy, and that the one way to stop it is get pissed off and fight in a few places to show our strength and avoid all alliances.   3. the reality that Iraq 1 was a war against our self: we set up and encouraged Saddam. Same in Afghanistan with the Taliban. The only graceful way out is take some serious responsibility for the cold war and the new struggles that unfolded when the rug was lifted and new forces of contention (like in Yugoslavia with the death of Tito) were revealed.   4. We need to face up to the resistance to the idea that American style markets and democracy is the good model (Fukuyama).   5. we need to face gracefully that the US is a declining share of the world's power, economic or most any other measure, and th US economy is in a long term decline from its fifty year post ww 2 "bubble".   If these are more or less true, then we need to move toward   1. multilateral security conversations as much as possible 2. take responsibility for some of the mess in the world. 3. make a conscious choice of supporting a business climate that is high tech, environmentally sound (way ahead of Kyoto), and offers a much larger model of inclusion for those currently being marginalized. 4. Deal with Pakistan in a multilateral way 5. Clean up the dirty politics of our own people In Iraq, as represented by Bremmer. 6. Support many open public meetings in Iraq, with conferences about issues: economy, education, religious/ state balance - not issues to come to fast conclusions, but to get the issues out and clarify the complexities. Any discussion anywhere it is possible. (it is probably too late for this except as part of a multinational effort). 7. Recognize how much we and the Iraqis - and many many others - have lost in this last 18 months. good will toward the US, tax and deficit issues, the militarization of the 21st century.   ********

Posted here Tuesday, June 01, 2004 at 5:32:47 PM     Novak on Afghanistan http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak31.html   ********

Posted here Tuesday, June 01, 2004 at 4:12:36 PM     Back. There is a lot of deep anger at Bush, which I felt and saw on the weekend trip. At the same time several conversations suggested that some people are not, and they don't feel to themselves that they are in a minority. On the contrary they feel that the progressives are hot tempered, unconstrained, narrow, and miss the point of pragmatic normalcy. I am just reporting. As my own depth of concern about the world , with Iraq as a footstep to a bad future, hardens, I find myself puzzled by the polls, and these Bush tolerant conversations. Watching the news on CNN at the airport showed how rarely does the press get beneath the surface, so that this morning, all was a glow with a new government. "Bush won, that was what we wanted. Back to the storms in Iowa" I increasingly think that the weakness of congress, when it supported the war, was the crucial event, because if that was possible, then some force scares the media and the congressmen. We should have noticed how odd it was, given the state of evidence, the criticism of the US in the world press, but so little opposition. What is it? How does it work? Many people think that having an opinion is thinking. Thus much of the press and much of the congress does not distinguish between thinking and having an opinion. Hence the idea of being thoughtful before a conclusion (embracing an opinion) does not feel like an option, since thinking itself looks, in this view, already like having an opinion. Congress and much of the press could have taken the view that "we don't yet know" and worked it from that leverage point. But they did not. It was either support or opposition. On the other hand, those who opposed the war, in the press and the few in congress, certainly were doing some thinking, and it didn't have an effect. There is a good summary article of the role of the New York Review of Books that I read coming back on the plane. It shows he depth and critical analysis on the opposition side. (you may need to play with these URL's I can't see to get the blog software to reproduce them. Take the ; out of the first http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040607&;s=sherman and for an intresting not much looked at site http://www.nicholasjohnson.org/mainpage.html#*%20Terrorism%20and%20the%20War%20in%20Iraq and if thise doesn't work try http://www.nicholasjohnson.org/mainpage.html and click through enter and then terrorism So I remain puzzled. And then there is the new(?) government in Iraq. Back to reading... ********