Framed

Selective Memory

George Santayana famously observed that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  To which I would add that a little, selective memory is a dangerous thing.  Exhibit A in support of this corollary is George W. Bush's recent speech to the Air Force Academy in which he "called the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a “great struggle” akin to World War II and warned anew against those who would waver in it."

Laying aside for a moment Bush's ludicrous but annoying habit of comparing himself to war leaders like Roosevelt, Churchill and Truman, a fuller, nonselective comprehension of history would locate the historical model for Afghanistan and Iraq in World War I.

John Quiggan writes:

[T]he absence of this most bloodily futile of wars from historical memory has been a huge boon to the war party. With a historical memory of war dominated by the “Good War” against Hitler and the Axis, it’s unsurprising that Americans have been much more willing than the citizens of other democratic societies to accept war as part of the natural order of things.
*  *  *
Ignorance of the Great War also produces faulty historical understanding in other respects, as evidenced in the recent flap about appeasement (leaving aside its use by ignorant ranters who have clearly never even heard of Munich). For those without any memory of the Carthaginian peace of Versailles, the policy of appeasement seems to be simply a spineless failure to resist unprovoked aggression, starting with the repudiation of Versailles and the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. But by the 1930s the injustice and untenability of the Versailles settlement was obvious, and fighting a war to enforce it was unthinkable. The fact that merely redressing injustices would do nothing to contain Hitler only become clear gradually. The idea that the failure of appeasement in the 1930s shows that governments should never negotiate with hostile powers is simply silly.

It also seems to me that when we do, on those rare occasions, remember World War I, what we recall is often the romantic myth of the flying aces, those magnificent men in their flying machines who adhered chivalrously to the duello of the knights of the air.  Seldom to we dwell on death in the muddy, disease-ridden trenches, or on the terrors of mustard gas, or on the futile infantry charges against fortified enemy positions.  These horror of war seem quite similar to today's warfare by IED and suicide bomber.

Harry

So with the Queen's encouragement,  Prince Harry has been fighting in Afghanistan for the last ten weeks?  Good for him.

Now when do Jenna and Barbara enlist?

Death to Downloaders

Wow.  We're really lucky that the Good Guys won and Afghanistan is now free of bloodthirsty Taliban-style know-nothing medievalism.  Here's the latest:

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic   court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then   upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times   but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of   the West's ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international   protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in   Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a   Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran   justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the   prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at   Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter.   But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious   judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal   representation and sentenced to death.

Like the coda of Charlie Wilson's War says, we won the war but fucked up the peace.

Dangerous

This article by Bruce Riedel is depressing, but makes many of the same points that have been made by me and others about how Bush's obsession with Iraq and neglect of Afghanistan is allowing al Qaeda to regroup and grow.  Here is a sampling of quotes that ought to make anyone serious about protecting the country from a terrorist attack furious with this administration:

Al Qaeda is a more dangerous enemy today than it has ever been before. . . .   [T]hanks largely to Washington's eagerness to go into Iraq rather than concentrate on hunting down al Qaeda's leaders, the organization now has a solid base of operations in the badlands of Pakistan and an effective franchise in western Iraq. Its reach has spread throughout the Muslim world, where it has developed a large cadre of operatives, and in Europe, where it can claim the support of some disenfranchised Muslim locals and members of the Arab and Asian diasporas. Osama bin Laden has mounted a successful propaganda campaign to make himself and his movement the primary symbols of Islamic resistance worldwide. His ideas now attract more followers than ever.
*  *  *
Decisively defeating al Qaeda will be more difficult now than it would have been a few years ago.
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With the help of tactical advice and, probably, funds from al Qaeda, the Taliban had already regrouped by 2004. In 2005, bin Laden appeared in a Taliban video advising its commanders. By 2006, the Taliban had recovered sufficiently to launch a major offensive in Afghanistan and even attempted to retake Kandahar.
*  *  *
Al Qaeda has also developed closer ties to Kashmiri terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad.
*  *  *
Overall, al Qaeda quadrupled its output of videos between 2005 and 2006 -- all propaganda instruments, of course, but also a means for the organization's leaders to rally its followers and send them instructions.
*  *  *
Al Qaeda has expanded its influence in the Middle East and Europe.
*  *  *
Al Qaeda today is a global operation -- with a well-oiled propaganda machine based in Pakistan, a secondary but independent base in Iraq, and an expanding reach in Europe. Its leadership is intact. Its decentralized command-and-control structure has allowed it to survive the loss of key operatives such as Zarqawi. Its Taliban allies are making a comeback in Afghanistan, and it is certain to get a big boost there if NATO pulls out.
*  *  *
The challenge of defeating al Qaeda is more complex today than it was in 2001.
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The focus of Washington's new strategy must be to target al Qaeda's leaders, who provide the inspiration and direction for the global jihad. As long as they are alive and active, they will symbolize successful resistance to the United States and continue to attract new recruits. Settling for having them on the run or hiding in caves is not enough; it is a recipe for defeat, if not already an acknowledgment of failure.

These points should be made repeatedly and forcefully.  The administration has made the smug little argument that because there have been no major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, the Republicans are being good and careful stewards of our national security.  In fact, they are deliberately ignoring real threats and deploying our army in search of imaginary ones. 

Baby You Can Drive My Czar

Isn't overseeing war supposed to be the job of the Secretary of Defense?  So why is the Bush administration seeking a "czar"  to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? 

In one word: insulation.  In two words: political cover.  In three words: appearance of progress.

In four words: they are getting desperate.

History Lesson

5000 years of colonialism in 90 seconds (h/t to Sandmonkey).

Bundling

I was listening to a radio interview with a soldier's wife a couple weeks ago.  She said that in the military community where she lives, people don't refer to "the Iraq war" or "the Afghanistan war."  Instead, they call it all GWoT, the Global War on Terror.

As I think back over the events of the last six horrible years, it seems to me that that woman's perspective on events has been carefully formed and nurtured by the Bush administration.  It has been a very effective job of framing.  Imagine how much support you would find in polling this question:

Do you agree that the U.S. military should be in Iraq fighting terror?

Now imagine how much support you would find in polling this one:

Do you agree that the U.S. military should be in Iraq attempting to quell a Sunni/Shi'ite civil war?

One of the jobs, then of the new leadership in Washington should be to separate the various wars we are fighting and analyze them individually.  This is not to deny that there are overlaps and linkages among the wars we're fighting now; there are, and they are important to understand.  Still, branding all our conflicts under the Global War on Terror obscures more than it illuminates.

First, we are fighting a war in Iraq.    Bush's real reasons for embarking on this war will be debated by future historians (and psychologists).  From this vantage point, I think the point was to get rid of Saddam Hussein and to shake up the Middle East in hopes that its numerous problems could be more easily solved then.    (Unlike some of my fellow liberals, I've never bought the we-wanted-their-oil argument.)  Whatever the original objective, it seems that we are now on patrol in Baghdad and Anbar Province to attempt to stabilize the country so that the new Iraqi government can function.

Second, we are fighting a war in Afghanistan.  Our original purpose there was to punish the Taliban government for harboring bin Laden.  At this point, we are there to protect the new Afghan government against the return of the Taliban.  It would be nice to think that we are also looking for bin Laden, but I just don't see much evidence of that.

And third, we are engaged in a  struggle against al Qaeda and other radical Muslims who have chosen terrorism as a tactic by which to pursue their various goals.  This is not a new kind of war; just ask the Irish, the Ceylonese, or the Spanish, to name but a few of the peoples that have been been engaged in and victimized by terror tactics for years.

The administration and its allies have attempted to group all three of these wars into one Global War on Terror.  Joe Lieberman recently went on Meet the Press and, with a straight face, claimed that on 9/11, America was "attacked . . . by the same enemy that we’re fighting in Iraq today."  This jibed nicely with the administration's longstanding characterization of the people we're fighting in Iraq as terrorists.

Framing these separate wars this way as all part of the same struggle is like the  quintessential Microsoft bundling strategy.  If you buy Windows, you have to get Media Player and Explorer.  Gates & Co. have claimed that these components are mutually integrated; you can't get one without the others.  This claim, however, has been debunked, and in a similar fashion, so should the claim that the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and the struggle against Islamic radicals can be bundled together as the Global War on Terror.  Those of us who oppose the Iraq war will  find it easier to make our case if we can unbundle it from the other two.  Any progressive who utters the phrase "war on terror" should have his mouth washed out with soap.

Robbing Peter

Over at Firedoglake, Scarecrow has an excellent post  about how the planned escalation of the war in Iraq will make the situation in Afghanistan--remember Afghanistan?--worse:

Not only are the US and NATO forces already stretched for enough troops to deal with a resurgent Taliban, but some of the US troops already there are scheduled to be part of the "surge" into Iraq.

*  *  *

A US Army battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks to deploy to Iraq.

*  *  *

US commanders understand that the Afghan war is an "economy of force" operation, a military term for a mission that is given minimal resources because it is a secondary priority, in this case behind Iraq.

So Bush thinks that at a time when Mullah Omar is casually giving interviews to the Pakistani press (but somehow can't be found by U.S. forces) and the Taliban plans to ratchet up the war in Afghanistan, it is appropriate to draw down American forces there in order to intervene in the civil war in Iraq?

Bush must believe his own 9/11 propaganda.  Why else would we be slacking off on our efforts to defeat the Taliban, who were intimately tied to and gave shelter to al-Qaeda terrorists, while expanding our efforts in Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11?

As I've noted before, "our folly in Iraq is linked to our failure in Afghanistan.  Like so much else that the Bush administration has wrecked, it will take decades to fix."

Afghanistan

As Christy Hardin Smith points out, Iraq is not the only place where the United States has lost its way. 

Afghanistan was cast aside by George Bush in his quest to topple Saddam Hussein…for whatever misguided, unsupported and unsubstantiated reasons, Iraq was the goal, and the land that had long served as a haven to al qaeda and Bin Laden's hatred of the West became a forgotten dusty relic for everyone but the troops we left behind there to clean up after our mess.  We caught Saddam Hussein well over a year ago, he was convicted last month in a messy show trial…and Iraq is still a mess.  Osama Bin Laden and his surrogates are still at large, and Pakistan is reportedly allowing the Taliban fighters who are injured in skirmishes with allied troops in Afghanistan to be treated in safe-houses across the border.

We have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the peoples of this region by our sheer neglect of the issues that matter to them:  decent roads, food, shelter, economic prospects…keeping our word.  Any of these things would have done wonders — both in Afghanistan and also in Iraq early on — but because George Bush's Administration failed to adequately plan for the aftermath of the boom-boom portion of the invasion (you know, that point where the really hard work sets in…), we are now reaping a whirlwind of grief in a whole lot of places.

I supported the war in Afghanistan.  It was a thoroughly justifiable response to September 11 and to a regime that not only harbored Al-Qaeda, but was actually inseparable from Al-Qaeda.  The Taliban was the local Afghani expression lf Al-Qaeda.

With justice so clearly on our side in Afghanistan--as it was so clearly NOT in Iraq--the United States had a chance to set that country on the course to responsible government and civil society.  This would have required investment, development and deployment of a Peace Corps type of aid workers.  Even with all of that, Afghanistan's future could not have been assured--but it would certainly be brighter than it is today.

Instead, Bush & Co. did Afghanistan on the cheap, choosing instead to use popular outrage over September 11 to pursue their pre-existing plan of replacing Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  This cheap-think began with the military action, where  significant Al-Qaeda elements (including, probably, Osama bin Laden) slipped away from the mercenary Northern Alliance, to whom we  had outsourced our September 11 response.  It has continued in the post-war environment; resources that should have gone to building civil society on soil recently tilled by Islamic theocrats have instead been put into Iraq.

In this way, our folly in Iraq is linked to our failure in Afghanistan.  Like so much else that the Bush administration has wrecked, it will take decades to fix.