Timing

Fallujah shows clearly how absurd our present approach in Iraq has become. Toughness is no excuse for strategic stupidity.

The “Vulcans” as the neo-cons who seized control of our country (and the conservative movement) call themselves. They had their shot, made their case. And they have blown it.

As the bodies of well-intentioned U.S. soldiers and contractors stack up in the process of their hopeless struggle to feed, pacify and win over desperate (and, yes, brutally racist and anti-American) Iraqis, the ideologues’ failed geopolitical strategy unravels. And all-but-the-neo-con terrorism and war experts know it and have said it.

In the words of the immortal comic Buddy Hackett, the secret of comedy is…timing. Well, it’s the secret of democracy, too. And the timing is way, way off.

A long list of insiders and experts (more expert than I am) agree. They have come forward, offered genuine criticism and had their characters assassinated and their careers ended. There is now Richard Clarke, but before him was Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill(Former Bush aide: US plotted Iraq invasion long before 9/11 - [Sunday Herald]), and other experts in matters of policy, geopolitics and war.

And not one of these critics is “Liberal.” So forget the character assassination. And please stop trying to hook them all into some ridiculous “vast left-wing conspiracy.” These folks have nothing to do with the Left. Few, if any, are even Democrats. They don’t even like Democrats.

What is the root failure of the neo-con folly? You can’t, repeat, cannot, pacify and democratize a people through moderate force. Never happens, never will.

You have a couple of choices when it comes to force. Don’t use it. Or get Roman with it. The two degrees of force that do appear to work, courtesy of that most successful of Western Empires, Rome, are as follows:

1-Get Carthage on them. Carthage gave the Romans a lot of trouble a while back. So the Romans sent their troops, beat the Carthegians, sold them all into slavery, razed their city and sowed the ground with salt so nothing would even grow there again and no trace would ever remain. Worked like a charm. In other words, you can use overwhelming force and eradicate the indigenous population. The most extreme form of this is genocide.

2- You can punish hard and fast as a warning, then leave. The Romans also pioneered this approach, although they used it on their own troops, not on subjugated peoples, when they showed cowardice under “fire.” They called it decimation. The word is invariably used incorrectly these days to refer to option 1). What the Romans did was line up everyone in some loser platoon and then kill every tenth person. This left 90 percent of the soldiers intact. After this polite warning the rest tended to make a much more sincere effort. I am not a huge fan of this approach, either, though I prefer it to number 1).

That said, what is a guaranteed failure is the unholy combination we now practice. Namely, we go in, kill as few people as possible so as not to make the rest afraid of us. Then we stick around, as if we had earned their fear, if not respect, until there is retaliation against our people. Then we look powerless and are on the defensive—or must employ option 1) or 2).

This is truly the worst strategy imaginable. It is Vietnam redux. And it is precisely what our military has spent the last 30 years figuring out how never to do again. Yet here we are, militarily naïve political leaders dragging our military, the best in the world, true warriors for freedom, back into that tunnel with no light at the end of it, once again.

If we don’t leave in June, we leave in a year, or three or ten. But the minute we do leave, Iraq falls into totalitarianism, chaos or a civil war, and nothing we can do will stop it.

The outcome? Eventually, the region will calm down, run, most likely, by a brutal undemocratic government, just like every country in the Middle East, except, of course, for Israel.

Much as we may not like these forms of government, much as we may not like this outcome, there are laws of physics in the geopolitics of world events. Hope as we might, ideological as our aspirations may be, there is nothing we can do to hurry the march of democracy, or speed the end of tyranny.

It’s a matter of…timing. And, clearly as the horrible desecration of the bodies in Fallujah demonstrate, now is not that time. ¶ 2:36 PM

  Losing one for the Gipper

The truth and nothing but the truth. What earthly reason is there for the White House to block Condi Rice’s sworn testimony before the 9/11 Commission?

First a confession. I watch Washington types at hearings in awe. They have memories that are extraordinary. I can barely remember what I wrote last week, let alone what I talked about over dinner and with whom a month ago last Thursday. Either they write every detail of their existence down in a giant diary somewhere, and then memorize it and eat the pages, or …well, I just don’t know.

Now without going all conspiracy, let’s consider a couple of those details here. The Administration is working all out to assassinate the character of stalwart Republican and consummate White House and anti-terrorist veteran insider Dick Clarke. The White House even allowed a Fox News reporter to air a tape recording of a off-the-record, not under oath, interview with Clarke from the pre-9/11 Spring in which he defended the speed and focus of the Bush team’s anti-terrorism efforts.

Guess what? He was spinning to the reporters there. He dodged this when braced on it by the Commission, saying, accurately enough by DC standards, that he was putting the most pro-Administration spin on the facts as possible. That was his mission, he pointed out, as he was a member of the Administration at that point.

I’m shocked, shocked to find out that spokespeople misrepresent the situation to reporters, either on the record or on background…kidding. Of course they do. Watch any press conference, listen to any spokesperson for any political entity or politician and you hear the spin…Big deal.

The point of teasing this out of the barrage leveled at Clarke by Republican spin meisters is to emphasize that what he did then, they’re doing now. Doubt me? Fine, let’s see if the White House gives the OK to release the background briefings Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle gave to reporters just like they OK’d the release of Clarke’s.

I’d be quite happy to see all the secret testimony declassified. Better yet, let’s see them give the OK to Bob Novak to release the backgrounder they gave to him about Joe Wilson’s CIA wife.

Now National Security Advisor Rice is willing, eager even, to return to the Commission to give her side, off the record, in private…and by the way, unsworn. Only a technically non-existent “Executive privilege” issue prevents her from publicly testifying, though.

Call it the Poindexter Gambit.

It’s not the public part, however. It’s the “under oath” part that’s slippery. Even in the best of the editorials about this “public testimony” business, the oath part seems to get slid over, like a wet leaf on a rainy Spring sidewalk.

But the White House appears to know the difference. And the difference is between Watergate and Iran-Contra. That is, between the nuanced behavior of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Reagan’s John Poindexter.

Each of these Administrations got caught with a hand in the cookie jar. That is lying and covering up doing something. In Nixon’s case, he lacked the deniability, because folks he had spoken directly with, under oath, got caught and ratted him out. Reagan was smarter than that, and had smarter people around him, too. John Poindexter held firm. He took the hit, under oath, and was convicted for lying to Congress (later overturned). Reagan and his Administration survived unscathed.

The lesson here is simple: Whatever you did, don’t cover up and lie under oath about it. (Clinton might have been well served to consider this, too.)

If Condi Rice gives her side of l’affaire Clarke under oath, someone, probably a Democrat, will ask her, finally, “What did the President know about Clarke’s terrorist warnings? And if that fails, then what did Bush know about his book, vetted by the White House before publication, and when did he know it?” And if there are contradictions in her testimony now versus various deep background materials in the files of reporters from way back then, or some spin-control cover up issues about the book, then the Administration will get caught up in evasion and get sucked into a cover-up scandal.

It’s one of the most popular of all Washington sports, cover-up hunting. And the folks in town are damned good at it.

That’s what makes the Clarke accusations so dangerous. Not their substance, although, if true, it is incredibly damning. But because the White House saw his book pre-publication, there have doubtless been discussions and strategizing about it…and that alone, covered up under oath, will cause a political disaster no amount of spin can control.

I can only assume they know this in the White House. In fact, they must have known this all along.

This means that the stage play we now watch of Rice “wanting” to testify, but not under oath, the whole “privilege” business, is all carefully stage managed by those who remember Nixon and Kissinger, Reagan and Poindexter, and what the meaning of is is.

And rest assured, the buck is not going to stop with the President this time, if the managers have their way. This time it’s going to stop, at highest, with Condi Rice, after much protestation, herself. ¶ 10:06 AM