What We Got Right in the War on Terror

I was hoping to do some big analysis of Abe Greenwald's masterful essay, at Commentary, but never got around to it. This is simply the best piece I've read on the war on terror:

Over the course of the 10 years, American authorities foiled more than two dozen al-Qaeda plots. Those averted tragedies were not foremost on the minds of revelers who gathered to celebrate Bin Laden’s demise on May 1 at Ground Zero, Times Square, and in front of the White House. But if a mere few of the plots had materialized, those spaces might not even have been open to public assembly.

Not only have U.S. authorities managed to keep America safe from al-Qaeda for a decade; by the time he was killed, Osama bin Laden was barely a leader. Among the items recovered at his compound in Abbottabad were some recent writings, in which the former icon lamented al-Qaeda’s dramatically sinking stock and pondered organizational rebranding as a possible antidote.

His growing insignificance as a global player was not the product of chance. The marginalization of the world’s principal jihadist was the result of audacious American policy—indeed, the most controversial and hotly debated policy undertaken in the wake of 9/11. In the words of Reuel Marc Gerecht writing in the Wall Street Journal, “the war in Iraq was Bin Laden’s great moral undoing.” In his desperate attempt to drive American fighting forces out of Mesopotamia, Bin Laden sanctioned a bloody civil war in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. The carnage failed to repel the United States, but in the end, the countrywide slaughter of Muslims proved too much to bear for al-Qaeda’s own one-time and would-be supporters. The “Sunni awakening” that helped transform Iraq was an awakening out of al-Qaeda jihadism, and the blow it delivered to Bin Laden’s ambitions was stunning.

After the turnaround in Iraq, the landscape of the Muslim world suffered even greater changes—with ordinary Muslims rising to revolt against Persian and Arab tyranny, not against American hegemony. As Fouad Ajami has written: “The Arab Spring has simply overwhelmed the world of the jihadists. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, younger people—hurled into politics by the economic and political failures all around them—are attempting to create a new political framework, to see if a way could be found out of the wreckage that the authoritarian states have bequeathed them.”

It was the Freedom Agenda of the George W. Bush administration—delineated and formulated as a conscious alternative to jihadism—that showed the way. Indeed, the costly American nation-building in Iraq has now led to the creation of the world’s first and only functioning democratic Arab state. One popular indictment of Bush maintains that he settled on the Freedom Agenda as justification for war after U.S. forces and inspectors found no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The record shows otherwise. “A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East,” he said before the invasion, in February 2003. “Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both.”

And something of the kind has come to pass. “One despot fell in 2003,” Ajami has said. “We decapitated him. Two despots, in Tunisia and Egypt, fell, and there is absolutely a direct connection between what happened in Iraq in 2003 and what’s happening today throughout the rest of the Arab world.”

Thus, there are three intertwined achievements that have proved to be the dispositive features of American success in the war on terror: formulating the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East, reversing the course of the war in Iraq, and establishing a national-security apparatus to foil multiple terrorist attacks. It is no coincidence that they are also the most controversial foreign policies America has implemented since the Vietnam War.

September 11 was a hinge moment in American history. The attacks plunged the nation into a full-scale war against non-state entities. Any adequate American response had to break with previous approaches in previous conflicts. War could not be waged on parties inside states in the same way it had been waged on states themselves. Prisoners captured on a battlefield in a country not their own and with no interest in following the rules of conventional war could not be handled as they had been. Getting the edge on Islamist terror would mean fundamentally rethinking our approach to both the blunting of deadly threats and the shuttering of the political hothouses of the Middle East in which such threats thrive.

The adoption of these unprecedented and uncompromising means of war inspired animated debate in the United States. In fighting the war on terror, we have been told, America has become—depending on the accuser—either too dismissive or too enamored of democracy. Some on the left think our national-security apparatus undermines our defining ideals. On the right, outraged voices condemn our naive enthusiasm for helping to secure liberty for Muslims abroad, calling it a form of multicultural self-sabotage. After civil war seized post-invasion Iraq, critics from across the ideological spectrum denounced our misguided effort. The fits and starts and frustrations of the war decade have this one thing in common: we have done battle in an age when spectacular setbacks appear to provide irrefutable evidence of our own baseness and incompetence—a few years before drab good news arrives to refute both expert opinion and common knowledge.

The arguments that we have prosecuted the war on terror immorally and ineffectually are important, and deserve the respectful hearing they have received, even if many of those arguing these points have resorted to launching the most abject slanders and accusations toward those who believe the war on terror is just and has been fought honorably. To be sure, not everything the United States has done in the war on terror has been correct. Far from it. As Winston Churchill said, “War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.” In the fight against Islamist terrorism, American blunders have come in all shapes and sizes, and in truth there are few small wartime miscalculations. This is especially so in an age of instant global headlines.

We continue to suffer for our biggest mistakes. Concerning the failure to catch Bin Laden and make serious efforts to nation-build early in the Afghanistan war, inaccurate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons, and the Pentagon’s ill-preparedness for the Iraqi insurgency, there can be no absolution. These errors have cost the country tragic sums in money, credibility, and life. They also set our efforts back precious years.

But these blunders, great as they are, have not undone America’s outstanding accomplishments. Ten years ago, the most delusional optimist among us would not have predicted the irrelevancy of Osama bin Laden or a decade without another al-Qaeda attack, let alone a democratic Iraq and a transformative explosion of antiauthoritarianism in the Middle East.

Nor do American achievements in this war mean we are in a position to quit the fight. The notion that America achieved closure with Bin Laden’s killing suggests to some, perhaps even the occupant of the White House, that the war on terror has had its decade and the United States can now move on. “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home,” said Barack Obama this summer as he announced a sizable drawdown of troops in Afghanistan for the fall of 2012. The suggestion that our work is done has traction only because resolute American action at home and abroad have provided a sense of security so pervasive it now goes unquestioned.

The United States has fallen prey to false comfort in the past. So before we submit to the siren song of closure, we would do well to recall that that is exactly where this war began—and our retaining some genuine measure of security has been the result of thinking and acting more boldly than we have in generations.

Now go read the whole thing.

We Didn't Overreact to 9/11

At the video, an interesting clip featuring Ann Coulter and Matt Welch.

And see Charles Krauthammer, at Washington Post, "The 9/11 ‘overreaction’? Nonsense":

9/11 was our Pearl Harbor. This time, however, the enemy had no home address. No Tokyo. Which is why today’s war could not be wrapped up in a mere four years. It was unconventional war by an unconventional enemy embedded within a worldwide religious community. Yet in a decade, we largely disarmed and defeated it, and developed the means to continue to pursue its remnants at rapidly decreasing cost. That is a historic achievement.

Our current difficulties and gloom are almost entirely economic in origin, the bitter fruit of misguided fiscal, regulatory and monetary policies that had nothing to do with 9/11. America’s current demoralization is not a result of the war on terror. On the contrary. The denigration of the war on terror is the result of our current demoralization, of retroactively reading today’s malaise into the real — and successful — history of our 9/11 response.

I love Krauthammer. Read it all.

Just War Theory

A cool discussion, with Michael Walzer:

RELATED: At Dissent, from 2006, "Regime Change and Just War," by Michael Walzer. And the response, which destroys Walzer's argument, from Jean Bethke Elshtain: "Jean Bethke Elshtain Responds."



And more Walzer, more recently, at New Republic, "The Case Against Our Attack on Libya."

Chronic Misperception and U.S.-Iraq Conflict

A powerful and very interesting study from Charles Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson, at International Security, "Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience."

Some may recall that Duelfer led the Iraq Survey Group investigating Iraq's WMD programs, which issued a report, "Comprehensive Revised Report with Addendums on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction." And check the criticism of Duelfer from Christopher Carson, "What Charles Duelfer Missed."

Opinions are pretty much set in stone on the causes of war with Iraq. That said, the Duelfer and Dyson study at International Security is valuable for its perspective on the dyadic dynamics of U.S.-Iraq conflict. Theories of misperception delve into the psychological biases of decision-making. There's an outstanding theoretical discussion at the essay, and that alone is worth taking a few minutes. From the U.S. perspective, the main problem was an essentially irreversible enemy image of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an image that over time became resistant to new stimuli that might have provided better information on Iraqi intentions and capabilities. But perhaps even more interesting is Saddam's own failures of misperception, and how these virtually guaranteed a U.S. military response. Here's this from the study:

As deputy head of the UNSCOM inspections from 1993 to 2000, and again as the chief investigator into Saddam’s WMD programs after the 2003 invasion Duelfer had a unique opportunity to develop an understanding of how the Iraqis viewed UN weapons inspections and resolutions. During one of the first inspections, while Iraq was still surrounded by the massive forces used to expel it from Kuwait, UNSCOM staff was blocked and various materials were secreted away. This blatant obstruction of the UN inspectors was reported to the Security Council and, after debate among its fifteen members, the council dispatched the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, and the head of the UNSCOM inspection team, Rolf Ekeus, to Baghdad to resolve this dispute over access afforded under the UN cease-fire resolution.

This response—the dispatch of two Swedish diplomats—was seen by Saddam as indicating a weakness of will in the Security Council. He had violated the terms of the cease-fire resolution, and the response was neither regime threatening nor even punitive in nature. The weak response communicated a lesson that shaped Saddam’s attitude toward the UN process. The Security Council would not recommence the war to enforce compliance with disarmament requirements, in spite of whatever some members may have said at the time. Saddam came to regard the UN process not as one wherein he would be obligated to comply categorically, but as one of testing and bargaining. He would give up what he had to give up to convince the Security Council to lift its UN sanctions, but no more.

Over time, Saddam and senior Iraqis came to find the broader UN process vexing and confusing. The collective Security Council position as codiªed in its resolutions seemed straightforward: sanctions would remain in place until Iraq satisfied weapons inspectors that all of Iraq’s WMD capabilities had been eliminated and monitoring systems were put in place to detect any attempts to reconstitute them in the future. Very different messages were sent from individual council members, however. During the Bill Clinton administration, public comments by the president and by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated that Washington’s policy was containment of Saddam with an eventual goal of regime change. Albright, in a speech at Georgetown University in March 1997, responded to a question on lifting sanctions by not ing not that Saddam could have them lifted if he complied with UN resolutions, but that “a dialogue” would be possible with a “successor regime.”

To the Iraqis, Albright’s statement seemed to contradict Security Council resolutions. Containment depended on a permanent retention of sanctions, but the resolutions contained the provision that if and when Iraq satisfied weapons inspectors, then sanctions would be lifted. Saddam and senior Iraqis therefore questioned whether Washington would ever agree to lift sanctions, even if Iraq could satisfy the inspectors. They put this paradox to senior UNSCOM staff as well as to officials of Security Council member nations such as France, Great Britain, and Russia, and received assorted and contradictory opinions in return ...

The full study is at the link.

Oshkosh M-ATV MRAP at X-Games 17 (Los Angeles)

I've written about the MRAP previously, but it was quite an experience to see one of these mofos up close. The word is BIG!!

(The Navy set up a big recruitment station at the X-Games.)

The MRAP is a high-mobility mine-resistant ambush-protected combat vehicle. The units were developed as a key anti-insurgency vehicles, designed to protect soldiers from IEDs (improvised explosive devices). By 2005, in Iraq, roughly half of all combat casualties were due to IED attacks. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who retired in June, said the deployment of MRAPs in Iraq and Afghanistan has saved "thousands of lives." The Oshkosh M-ATV page is here.

Click to enlarge the image below:

Americans Involved in Too Many Foreign Conflicts, New Poll Finds

At The Hill, "The Hill Poll: Majority says military involved in too many places." (At Memeorandum.)

And pluralities don't think U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq has made us safer. Check the link. For the general public, it's war-weariness that explains this. But on the ideological fringes, the findings will give support to isolationist voices who deplore the forward exercise of American power.

What's interesting about about the survey is there's no mention of President Obama's deployment to Libya. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times had an outstanding piece on outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. He's been on record of late saying that the U.S. is a little tired of war, and that the military needs a break. And from the Times' piece:

Gates' concern for the troops is a key part of his legacy as he leaves office.

He has pushed the lumbering Pentagon bureaucracy to turn out new armored vehicles and other equipment to keep soldiers safer in combat and to get them treatment faster when they are wounded.

And he has become a voice of caution and even outright opposition to committing American forces to new wars. Gates publicly questioned the need to join the NATO air war in Libya, arguing that the military already was overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since then, he has sought to limit the U.S. role.

Gates emphasizes that he would not hesitate to support sending troops to another conflict if national security were threatened, and he favors only "modest" reductions in troop levels in Afghanistan in coming months. That puts him at odds with some in the Obama administration who want to bring U.S. troops out sooner.

But the longer he is in office, Gates said, the "heavier" the burden he bears when he is asked to make decisions that inevitably involve sending more American troops to their deaths.

"I've got a military that's exhausted," he said. "Let's just finish the wars we're in and keep focused on that instead of signing up for other wars of choice."

I think that's a fair statement, and it's especially noteworthy considering President Obama's amateurish and hypocritical rationale for military intervention.

War on Terror Goes On

At ABC News:

Osama bin Laden's death puts an end to a chapter that has cost the United States thousands of lives, billions of dollars and countless resources. But it's unlikely to end the U.S. war against terrorism or reduce the resources spent on such missions, though how they are allocated will likely change.

U.S. Navy SEALs killed -- in the words of President Bill Clinton -- "public enemy number one" in a top-secret, risky operation in Abbotabad, Pakistan Sunday night.

The mission itself was unlikely to have cost the U.S. military a substantial amount, experts say. It was conducted by 40 SEALs in the dead of night with four helicopters and lasted about 40 minutes. Any costs associated with the mission would come from the Department of Defense's overall operations and maintenance budget.

It's the hunt leading up to the raid that experts believe was more costly. It likely included aerial predators, unmanned surveillance aircraft, satellite imagery and other high-tech means to pin down bin Laden's location.

U.S. intelligence officials for years had been looking for a messenger close to the al Qaeda leader. They were able to track down his name in 2007 and finally spotted him in 2009. In August, they received a crucial tip that bin Laden was hiding in a mansion in Abbottabad, a city near Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

The mission that killed bin Laden was only a part of a wider effort, lasting more than a decade, to take out the man who declared in 1998 that it was every person's duty to "kill Americans wherever they are found."

More at the link.

And related, from Andrew McCarthy, "A Different Kind of Justice."

Libya and the Anti-Intervention Left

From Jamie Kirchick, at World Affairs Journal:

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson argues that the campaign against Muammar Qaddafi represents the height of hypocrisy. Because the United States is abstaining from taking military action against other regimes in the region that are also using force to quell domestic uprisings—namely, Bahrain and Yemen—“all the homilies about universal rights and freedoms” are bunk. The war in Libya “isn’t about justice,” Robinson says, “it’s about power.” Far from arising out of some neoconservative impulse to spread democracy, he argues, the military action against the Libyan regime is rather an example of “realism” ...

The guiding principle of American foreign policy should be to support freedom overseas, when we can, where we can, and however we can. There are no firm rules by which this principle can be implemented. Libya, however, presented a rather obvious case: a murderous dictator who had the blood of many thousands of innocent people—including American citizens—on his hands, who had fomented instability in his region, and who had for many years been a leading sponsor of international terrorism, was suddenly confronted by a mass domestic insurgency. He reacted violently, in a way that rendered moot whatever economic benefit he was providing to the West. He all but announced his intention to commit genocide against his own people, stating that he would “cleanse Libya house by house,” practically rendering international intervention a legal imperative due to the stipulations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which the United States is a signatory. Furthermore, from a basic practical standpoint, and unlike in Yemen and Bahrain, Libya is located on the periphery of Europe, meaning that continued strife would have resulted in a mass refugee exodus onto the shores of NATO states. By assisting an indigenous revolt, and not partaking in the dread warfare of the sort that liberals like Robinson so fervently opposed in Iraq, the United States and its allies were given a prime opportunity, the sort of opportunity that arrives once in a blue moon, to overthrow a despicable regime and implement something better in its stead.

More at the link.

Kirchik is a great writer.

Obama is Awesome!

"I don't care!"

Hey, cool and awesome, like JBW!!

Botched Neocon Wars? Hardly

Ideological simplification is one of the biggest problems we're seeing with all the intense debate over Libya and the wider "Arab Spring." One example is Andrew Sullivan's little piece that stops just short of slamming neocons as fascist. Sully draws on C. Bradley Thompson's recent book on neoconservatism, but amplifies the implications without the theoretical context. For background, see Thompson's recent piece, "Neoconservatism Unmasked." It's pretty abstract, but if Thompson's right, there's a lot in my personal philosophy that's at odds with the neoconservative program hypothesized there. That said, much of the current debate over intervention in Libya hinges on the argument that the Iraq war was a colossal blunder of world historical proportions. It's the progressive meme that the Bush administration blew the mission after the initial post-conflict phase of operations. The photo-op on the USS Abraham Lincoln came to symbolize the hubris of an administration many argued was hell-bent on war and profanely dismissive of international norms. There's no convincing ideological partisans otherwise, of course, so it's probably not worth it to make the effort. Yet real-world events have repeatedly shown that the Bush administration's foreign policy was frequently masterful and often quite successful. There's been a long slide in Afghanistan's political efficacy, which is why we're still there today, after ten years of war. But in Iraq, the lodestar for progressive attacks on the "Bush-Cheney cabal," the revolutionary changes in the Middle East have elevated Baghdad to regional diplomatic prominence. See New York Times, "Ready or Not, Iraq Ascends to Take Helm of Arab Bloc":

BAGHDAD — After Libya was suspended from the Arab League last month, de facto leadership ended up coincidentally in the hands of Iraq, the Arab nation with the most experience — much of it painful — with a foreign-led military campaign against an unpopular dictator.



For all of that still unsettled pain, the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari — in his new capacity as head of the Arab League — rushed off to Paris last Friday evening to join Western and Arab allies, where he argued passionately in favor of action against Libya, citing the American no-fly zone in northern Iraq that protected the Kurdish population from Saddam Hussein in the years before the American invasion here, according to a senior official who took part in the Paris deliberations.



And soon, Iraqi leaders, who are facing their own protest movement, plan to use their own troublesome democracy, still bloody and inchoate, as a showcase for Middle East countries. Iraq is taking on a larger diplomatic role in regional affairs as host of the group’s annual summit meeting — while assuming the rotating presidency of the league — in May.



“If there’s a political message, it’s that Iraq is back to play a major and positive role in the Arab region,” said Labid Abawi, the deputy foreign minister who has led a committee to prepare Baghdad for the summit meeting.



“We take pride in that Iraq has already exceeded all these other Arab countries in establishing a democratic regime,” he said. “Now, we can say yes, we are on the right track, and other Arab countries can follow suit in establishing a democratic regime.”

There's more at the link, but I want to reiterate the point above: No amount of evidence, not even Iraqi testimony on the country's democratic consolidation, will wrest from idiot progressives the claim that toppling Saddam Hussein was a debacle. It's all they have, along with endless allegations of racism and the demonization of Israel. And to respond to simpleton Mike Tuggle, who asked if I'd lost my "'neo-conservative illusions' as a result of the botched Neocon Wars?," the answer is no --- because I don't have any illusions to lose.

Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Maschek, Iraq War Hero, Heckled at Columbia Over ROTC

I got the heads up on this first from Dana at CSPT, "The students at Columbia University have an absolute right to express their opinions ... and so do I: some of them are worth less than the remnants of dinner I flushed down the toilet this morning."

Dana's reporting on this from New York Post, "Hero's unwelcome: Wounded Iraq vet jeered at Columbia

Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

"Racist!" some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.

"It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting," said Maschek. "There are bad men out there plotting to kill you."

I'm speechless, really. I don't know --- and I can't identify with --- some of my fellow Americans anymore.

See the additional commentary at Black Five, "Columbia University brings shame and dishonor to the Ivy League." And at JammieWearingFool, "Classy: Columbia Douchebags Heckle Wheelchair-Bound Purple Heart Iraq War Vet." (Via Memeorandum.)

The Left's Opportunistic Antiwar Movement

A good clip, from Reason.tv:

It's obviously true that the antiwar movement of the early 2000s was an anti-Bush, anti-GOP campaign. But what's not mentioned is that the ANSWER folks are an all-purpose perpetual protest organization. They latch on to any developments on the far left and attempt to seize the initiative. That happened at the outset of the protests against Prop. 8 and also during the anti-S.B. 1070 protests in Arizona. And while Democrats have clearly dropped any pretense of being antiwar during the Obama interregnum, these same partisans have little compunction against allying with Stalinists of the ANSWER sort. It's all about timing. ANSWER keeps itself afloat with non-stop outrage, but they're just one segment of the broader progressive left that is anti-American and neo-communist. Code Pink would be a good example. Friendly with President Obama, they advocate extreme positions on the revolutionary left. Recall what John Tierney wrote in 2005:

The irony of the modern “peace” movement is that it has very little to do with peace — either as a moral concept or as a political ideal. Peace is a tactical ideal for movement organizers: it serves as political leverage against U.S. policymakers, and it is an ideological response to the perceived failures of American society. The leaders of anti-war groups are modern-day Leninists ...

And speaking of ANSWER, they're gearing up for their 8th anniversary protest march in Hollywood: "STOP THE WARS: Resist the War Machine! — 8th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq."

Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.

Protest and resistance actions will take place in cities and towns across the United States. Scores of organizations are coming together. Demonstrations are scheduled for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and more.

I covered last year's protest, which saw about two thousand demonstrators on hand. I expect to be there again this year, so expect more top-quality coverage.

April Glaspie Memo Leaked

By Wikileaks, and leftist historian Juan Cole was all over it: "Glaspie Memo Vindicates Her, Shows Saddam’s Thinking."

She wasn't "vindicated," actually.

And Cole takes heat in the comments, and this one's representative:

I generally enjoy your blog posts, and read your blog regularly, however every once in a while you’ll write something that I just can’t understand coming from you. Usually it’s something supportive about Obama (which really from your position on middle eastern affairs makes absolutely no sense whatsoever – think Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, etc…).

Now, though, you write this. As another has said, this information has been out in the open for years. You write an article claiming that this old information purportedly “exonerates [Glaspie] from the charges by her political enemies in the US Congress that she inadvertently gave Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait.”

Yet the case against Glaspie has NEVER been that she gave an EXPLICIT “green light” to Saddam to invade Kuwait, but rather that her indifference on the matter was interpreted by Saddam as “good enough”. Nobody has accused Glaspie of giving Saddam “permission” to invade Kuwait. This entire article, based on years old information, is completely misguided.

I’m no defender of Saddam, but I am a defender of accurate and factual reporting on historical events. Your assertion that Saddam was “paranoid and desperate” and your implication that Iraq WASN’T in financial crisis is absurd. It is a fact that at the conclusion of the war Iraq had around $130 billion in international debt excluding interest. To portray that as simply an assertion of Saddam’s is dishonest.

I’m so sick of people painting this as such a black-and-white issue, and you should know better, Juan. The disputes between Iraq and Kuwait were not solely the fault of Iraq, even less so the fault of Saddam’s “paranoia”.

At the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq WAS in serious financial trouble. Kuwait WAS exploiting the situation by over-producing oil in order to hold down Iraq’s economy. There WAS a legitimate border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait regarding slant drilling to be investigated. These disputes between the two states were exploited by the Ba’ath administration as a pretext for invasion, probably due to the economic pressure it was under (NOT “Saddam’s paranoia”). This was done following consultation with Glaspie, who never offered a concrete position on the matter. BOTH states are responsible for exploiting the situation to their benefit, which culminated in the invasion of Kuwait.

Kuwait isn’t simply the helpless victim as it was portrayed when the US exploited the situation in the exact same way, leading to the Gulf War. Its actions towards Iraq contributed to the lead up to the invasion.

A responsible historian would portray this event in its totality, including the actions of both sides which led up to the invasion. A responsible historian would identify where both legitimate grievences lie and where states are exploiting the situation to further their own interests. A responsible historian wouldn’t paint this in such a storybook manner, as you have here, with Saddam being the evil, “paranoid” mustache-twirling villain and Kuwait the helpless damsel in distress.

I would obviously be interested in hearing your response, or your justification for either this article or for your portrayal of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in general. I’m not trying to attack you but it’s just really disappointing when someone I hold in such high regard writes something as inaccurate and low quality as this. As I said before, I just can’t understand it.

The Methodology of Contemporary Progressive Argumentation

I'm catching up on some of the reaction to Colman McCarthy's essay on ROTC at yesterday's Washington Post.

iOWNTHEWORLD's commentary is here (and a McCarthy's mug shot as well). Warner Todd Huston is here, and CSPT is here. And William Kristol hearts Allahpundit here.

But some of the best commentary is at National Review, for example Jonah Goldberg, "The Moral Mush of Pacifism." And especially Victor Davis Hanson, "I, I, Me, Me, My, My — for Pacifism!":

Somehow Colman McCarthy included almost every leftist trope possible in his Washington Post op-ed opposing ROTC on campuses in the post–“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era. Jonah has covered the main points, but the essay should be taught in schools as an example of the methodology of much of contemporary liberal argumentation.

1. Self-referencing narcissism? McCarthy in a brief essay references himself — I, me, my — in the first person 13 times. He has outdone even Justice Sotomayor and Barack Obama on that count. When I began the piece I wondered whether he would, as is the practice these days of an aging generation, actually reference life on the ramparts in the 1960s — as in, what I did in those days. And lo and behold, then it appeared: “To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s . . .”

*****

3. Historical ignorance? McCarthy seems to suggest that U.S. action in WWII, including and especially bombing, was a crime. One can enter into legitimate arguments over the morality and efficacy of leveling Hamburg and Tokyo, but it is just a faculty-lounge bull session without commensurate discussion of how else were the Allies, largely disarmed by the 1930s, to stop Hitler or the Japanese militarists who by 1944 were murdering off the battlefield several thousands a day in eastern Europe and Asia. I am not sure 1930s pacifism was going to appeal to Herr Hitler. Voting against the war after Pearl Harbor was not going to bring remorse from the Japanese for the several million butchered in China over a near decade (1931-41) of unopposed bloodletting. McCarthy does not seem to realize that organized murdering in the death camps, in the purges and collectivizations, in the Communist revolution and subsequent Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution — much of it far away from the battlefield — by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao accounted for perhaps 100 million dead in the 20th century: more than WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam combined.

4. Moral equivalence? Note McCarthy’s passing admiration for the spirit of the U.S. military as well as that of the Taliban (“I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s”). One force is trying to create consensual government, the other executes gays and non-believers, blows up cultural monuments, hangs and stones women, and on and on. For McCarthy, both are reduced to the same moral plane by virtue of similarly using arms. One could say the same abhorrent thing about the Waffen SS and those who landed at Normandy.

5. Special pleading? Colman invokes Martin Luther King. King certainly urged non-violent protests against Jim Crow and the Vietnam War; but was he a pacifist? Did he oppose in retrospect, say, the Civil War? That is, did he deplore Lincoln’s military decision to restore the Union without slavery? Perhaps non-violent protests might have won a secessionist South back into the Union by the 1920s or 1930s without slavery. After all, what is a mere 60 or 70 years more of slavery? Did King think that non-violent marching and protesting might have far better thwarted the racist dreams of a Hitler or Tojo?

6. Infantilism? We are lectured about “the impracticality of maintaining a military that has helped drive this country into record depths of debt. The defense budget has more than doubled since 2000, to over $700 billion.” The military still accounts for about 19-20 percent of the budget. Record depths of debt are far more attributable to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid expenditures that have grown astronomically and are unsustainable, despite steady increases in payroll tax rates. The recent military budgets of the last two decades fluctuated between 3.5 percent and 4.9 percent of GDP, far less than at any time since World War II. A graph of U.S. military spending both in budgetary percentages and as a share of GDP from 1940 to the present will show a general decline.

7. Self-serving self-righteousness? ...

RTWT.

John Bolton Hammers Obama Administration WikiLeaks Response — Barack Obama Especially — For Placing America's Interests at Risk

Well here's an appropriate follow-up to my previous post, "WikiLeaks Reveals Millions of Dollars Flowing to Extremists Worldwide: President Obama 'Less Critical' of Terror Financing Than Predecessor."

At The Guardian, Ambassador John Bolton takes issue with the Obama administration, "WikiLeaks cables: Barack Obama is a bigger danger — WikiLeaks harms the US. But the president's refusal to acknowledge the threats we face is a bigger danger" (via Memeorandum and Weasel Zippers):

This sustained, collective inaction exemplifies the Obama administration's all-too-common attitude towards threats to America's international interests. The president, unlike the long line of his predecessors since Franklin Roosevelt, simply does not put national security at the centre of his political priorities. Thus, Europeans who welcomed Obama to the Oval Office should reflect on his Warren Harding-like interest in foreign policy. Europeans who believe they will never again face real security threats to their comfortable lifestyle should realise that if by chance one occurs during this administration, the president will be otherwise occupied. He will be continuing his efforts to restructure the US economy, and does not wish to be distracted by foreign affairs.

The more appropriate response is to prosecute everyone associated with these leaks to the fullest extent of US law, which the justice department at least appears to be considering. Next, we must stop oscillating between excessive stove-piping of information, as before 9/11, and excessive access, as demonstrated by WikiLeaks. There is no one final answer, but the balance must be under constant analysis. Finally, the Pentagon's cyber-warriors need target practice in this new form of combat, and they could long ago have practised by obliterating WikiLeaks' electrons. Had we acted after the first release in July, there might not have been subsequent leaks, and lives and critical interests would have been protected.

RTWT.

WikiLeaks Reveals Millions of Dollars Flowing to Extremists Worldwide: President Obama 'Less Critical' of Terror Financing Than Predecessor — UPDATED

The hits keep coming, especially for progressives. And it's not the end game WikiLeaks' neo-communist champions were looking for. According to the New York Times, State Department cables reveal high-level concern over the flow of money to terrorist organizations worldwide, with funding going though some of our most important allies in the Persian Gulf and larger Middle East. And especially interesting is how the cables reveal that President Obama has been less concerned about cracking down on terror financing than was President George W. Bush. The news comes on the heels of the Ahmed Ghailani verdict last month. From civilian trials for enemy combatants to footsie financing for global jihad, the Obama administration continues to weaken U.S. national security and put more and more American lives at risk.

See, "Cables Suggest Mideast Resists U.S. on Cutting Terrorists’ Cash" (via Memeorandum):

WASHINGTON — Nine years after the United States vowed to shut down the money pipeline that finances terrorism, senior Obama administration officials say they believe that many millions of dollars are flowing largely unimpeded to extremist groups worldwide, and they have grown frustrated by frequent resistance from allies in the Middle East, according to secret diplomatic dispatches.

The government cables, sent by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and senior State Department officials, catalog a long list of methods that American officials suspect terrorist financiers are using, from a brazen armed bank robbery in Yemen last year to kidnappings for ransom, drug proceeds in Afghanistan and annual religious pilgrimages to Mecca, where millions of riyals or other forms of currency change hands.

While American officials in their public statements have been relatively upbeat about their progress in disrupting terrorist financing, the internal State Department cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations, offer a more pessimistic account, with blunt assessments of the threats to the United States from money flowing to militants affiliated with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other groups.

A classified memo sent by Mrs. Clinton last December made it clear that residents of Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, all allies of the United States, are the chief financial supporters of many extremist activities. “It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority,” the cable said, concluding that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

The dispatch and others offered similarly grim views about the United Arab Emirates (“a strategic gap” that terrorists can exploit), Qatar (“the worst in the region” on counterterrorism) and Kuwait (“a key transit point”). The cable stressed the need to “generate the political will necessary” to block money to terrorist networks — groups that she said were “threatening stability in Pakistan and Afghanistan and targeting coalition soldiers.”

While President George W. Bush frequently vowed to cut off financing for militants and pledged to make financiers as culpable as terrorists who carried out plots, President Obama has been far less vocal on the issue publicly as he has sought to adopt a more conciliatory tone with Arab nations. But his administration has used many of the same covert diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement tools as his predecessor and set up a special task force in the summer of 2009 to deal with the growing problem.

While federal officials can point to some successes — prosecutions, seizures of money and tightened money-laundering regulations in foreign countries — the results have often been frustrating, the cables show. As the United States has pushed for more aggressive crackdowns on suspected supporters of terrorism, foreign leaders have pushed back. In private meetings, they have accused American officials of heavy-handedness and of presenting thin evidence of wrongdoing by Arab charities or individuals, according to numerous State Department cables.

Were it not for bureaucratic momentum, the Obama administration would be much less vigilant against the terror finance network than it is. And of course, the same president who campaigned on global conciliation and talkin' sweet to terrorists, who offered heartfelt apologies around the world through 2009, and whose administration refused to fight a "War on Terror" in favor of managing "Overseas Contingency Operations," is again overwhelmed in the battle against global jihad. Recall that Obama told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward that the U.S. would be able to absorb another 3,000 dead in new terror attack on the scale of the 9/11 catastrophe. Hey, perhaps all our enemies need is a little more money. This is the administration's "new approach to terrorism."

Meanwhile, the conciliatory soft-on-terror parade continues with folks like Professor Daniel Drezner suggesting perhaps "Al Qaeda is no longer in the first tier of national security threats?" Drezner draws on Peter Bergen, "Bin Laden’s Lonely Crusade." Of course, it's not really about Bin Laden any more, but the global network of follow-on organizations who clearly have support in capitals across the Persian Gulf. But hey, let's defer to the experts. We need to talk to our enemies, and give them cash.

*****

UPDATE: A reader suggests by e-mail that the Times article, especially the last paragraph of the passage quoted above, contradicts my thesis at the post. So to reiterate: I'm stressing the president's disposition toward appeasement and public conciliation. Certainly State Department operatives, as is clear at the Times, have pressed Persian Gulf nations for greater cooperation, but the executive sets the tone, and I've thoroughly documented here the administration's shift to a softer, law enforcement fight against jihad. And further, others have seen administration failures in the WikiLeaks dump. Perhaps it's realpolitik, but the administration has failed to more effectively push against terror financing regimes, and this is to a notable extent apparent during the last two years. See, "WikiLeaks - Saudi Arabia: Their Oil is Thicker Than Our Blood":

In January 2010, the Saudi government refused to assist the U.S. request for information in a terror financing case involving a major Saudi bank. The Riyadh based Al Rajhi Bank, the largest Islamic bank in the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the third largest commercial bank in Saudi Arabia, refused to comply with a subpoena issued in the terror financing trial of Dr. Peter Seda, a U.S. operative of the Saudi based, U.S. designated, and allegedly defunct charity al Haramain Foundation. The evidence provided by the prosecution showed the Saudi al Rajhi Bank transferred $151,000 to the Chechen mujahedeen. Still, The Saudis who in 2007 ratified the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, refused to cooperate.

The May 31, 2010 edition of The Sunday Times revealed that the Afghan financial intelligence unit, FinTraca, reported that since 2006, at least $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia were smuggled into Afghanistan, headed most probably to the Taliban. The money entered Afghanistan through Pakistani tribal area, especially through North Waziristan, known as “al-Qaeda’s heartland.” One wonders how much of this money was used to buy weapons that killed 1,268 American soldiers and maimed thousands more in Afghanistan.

Also in May 2010, leaked Saudi intelligence document showing continued Saudi governmental support for al Qaeda in the form of cash and weapons, were published by Buratha News Service, an independent news source in Iraq.

On November 15, 2010, the GAO released its 2009 report on Saudi efforts to stop terror financing. It concluded that the “U.S. and Saudi officials report progress on countering terrorism and its financing within Saudi Arabia, but noted challenges, particularly in preventing alleged funding for terrorism and violent extremism outside of Saudi Arabia. (Emphasis added). Moreover, there are no restrictions on foreign branches of Saudi-based charities from funding terrorist groups. In addition, cash in large quantities to fund terrorism, is being smuggled out of the country via couriers.

Despite all the evidence of the danger posed by the Wahhabist message, the U.S. has continued its preferential treatment of the Kingdom, while Saudi funds continue flowing to Sunni radical groups, foreign charities, mosques, Islamic centers, and academic institutions.

It is time the U.S. took serious measures to protect Americans at home and abroad from the ill effects of Saudi funding to spread global Wahhabi radicalizations.

Say, About That Old 'Bush Lied' Trope...

From Doug Ross, "Say, About That Old 'Bush Lied' Trope, Looks Like Wikileaks Proved Obama Repeatedly Lied About Middle East Policy":

Anyone remember that exactly one year ago President Obama's original deadline for Iran expired?

Back in the halcyon days of hopeychange, newly minted President Barack Obama articulated his master plan for dealing with Iran. Mr. Peabody, set the Wayback Machine for May of 2009 ...

RTWT.

Axis of Evil: One Down Two to Go

There are few presidential slogans more reviled that President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" from his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002. Endlessly ridiculed, leftist media outlets argued such rhetoric "heightened dangers" while some claimed the speech came back to "haunt the U.S." in 2006. But President Bush stayed the course, and Iraq now boasts a democratic government that is unique among Arab states of the Middle East. See, "Seven Years Later, Iraq War Bearing Fruit." Unfortunately the Obama administration's precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces leaves a tenuous security balance between the Iraqi government and its long-time nemesis Iran. At the height of the insurgency Shiite power spread like an arc across the Persian Gulf and today Iran presses its claws on political developments in Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, and even the Pakistani hinterlands controlled by the Qaeda-Taliban-Lashkar enterprise. See, "Obama's Lose-Lose Iraq Policy." Now we have not only an emboldened Iran but an increasingly bellicose alliance between Tehran and Pyongyang. And while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the document release as an "attack on the international community," there's a demonstrable clarity to the nature of global threats today following the WikiLeaks disclosures. Even New York Times reporting occasionally concedes the dangers. See, "Iran Fortifies Its Arsenal With the Aid of North Korea."

I have called for regime change in North Korea. We'll hardly see a better time than right now. Japan has pressed the U.S. for a military response and Sen. John McCain argued for lobbying China on toppling Pyongyang. Continued soft-peddling will only bring more conflict on the Korean peninula, and more military and civilian deaths. It's time for American foreign policy to return to the animating vision of the early Bush years. President Bush's Axis of Evil speech identified the threatening storm of rogue regimes in the early post-9/11 period. Toppling Saddam in Iraq was costly, but the world benefits with one less leg of the rogue revisionist triad of terror. It's time to work on making the Axis of Evil two down and one to go.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on the 'False Promise of Objectivity'

I'm with Robert Stacy McCain about Olby, "Wow. I Think I Agree With Olbermann." But in an otherwise pompous "Special Comment" (is there any other kind?), I was about to give Obermann the benefit of the doubt until he got to his rant about the "objective" reporting on the "lies" of Iraq. By now the left's "Bush lied people died" meme is so entrenched as to have practically surgically removed the critical thinking of any Democrat-Socialist partisan. Keith Olbermann's scores no points here, albeit after a good college try.

Amnesty International Demands Obama Prosecute Bush for Admitting to Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind KSM…

At Weasel Zippers, "The far-left standing up for mass murdering Islamic terrorists, nothing new…"