What’s in a Name?

It’s all about the right name. Pulling out is not the way to put it. It’s either the eerie “stay the course,” or what?

Best to call it something most likely to win unilateral Executive Branch approval.

So let’s call “or what?” the Sharon Iraqi Peace Plan, or SIPP. Give the Iraqi “street,” the criminals and deadenders, or whatever, its most fervent desire: freedom from the occupier.

The SIPP is the really Sharon’s unilateral plan, which Bush backs wholeheartedly. (Sharon is putting up a fence and pulling out. Leaving the Palestinians to work out their new land themselves.)

Just to kick off the “or what?” chatter; say SIPP is a 5-year, 5-point plan that runs from now to the finish of 2008, the end of the next administration. It might go something like this:

1) Give Iraqis a month to draw two lines on the map. Wherever they like. Develop for, or with, each (Sunni middle, Shiite south, Kurds north.) a defense strategy for the three new territories. Help, as practical, to create defendable (if not impenetrable) borders of land mines, wire, etcLeave details of these fortifications to our military experts. (There will be some hots spots and some weak points, true.)

2) Arm (as if they need more weapons), organize and train the “militia” in each of the three regions. From June 30 to November 3 (like a deadline for any worker, even a CEO turning around a company around…or not). Keep it to small arms only, as much as possible. Maybe make public address announcements explaining how things were going getting split up and suggests that all Iraqis had best start organizing themselves in parties, militias, or, better yet, both. Offer, if requested, some useful reward for getting organized, like free “war college” seminars on the best way to defend the new borders and conferences to discuss ideas about democracy, government, etc..

3) Set a date certain for a pull back to secure areas for our troops (Again November 3, 2004). Leave them in defensible positions with access to easy resupply via the south and the north. This is assuming that Turkey would like to permit us to help ensure that the autonomous Kurds in the north stay out of Turkey. In the south, I assume our Gulf oil allies would like us between them and the “troubles” in Iraq Encourage, but do not oversee, elections.

4) With our troops removed safely to said secure locations, make it clear we’ll only step in to stop genocide. Hold this posture for three to four years. That should be enough time for the lines to harden, perhaps like North and South Korea, and for Iraqis themselves to organize functioning government to handle things. The people who used to do it are mostly still there. Iraqis themselves will figure out themselves how to fill needed positions. We offer no direct help on this stuff…their business. Stay put during inevitable border skirmishes. Move only if these escalate to full-scale invasions and then destroy the invading army units and immediately withdraw. No pacification. No nation building. No hearts and minds. No halfway measures. Cross the line; we help the other guy.

5) Encourage the Iraqis to get over it and get on with it…by putting it in their hands. If Iraqis want a single unified country, encourage them to arrange a “Continental Congress” and a “Constitutional Convention” to figure out the issues they all have with each other. Translate important works concerning democracy from Western to appropriate languages and make available on the Web.

The heart of the SIPP, or course, is the idea that Muslims have the right to be treated as adults, responsible for making their society safe and prosperous. With the light touch of a little well-handled disengagement by everyone else right about now, maybe Iraq will do better than Saddam this time. ¶ 9:22 AM

  Following the Money

Testimony by Janet Reno and Louis Freeh reminded me of what so occupied them, and all of us, during the latter years of the second Clinton Administration. It was like an 800 pound invisible elephant in the Commission room while they testified, namely, the yeoman efforts of Ken Starr.

According to the GAO, and they say it’s pretty hard to figure, in their “Combating Terrorism: Spending on Governmentwide Programs Requires Better Management and Coordination” (Letter Report, 12/01/97, GAO/NSIAD-98-39), the FBI spent $79.3 million on unclassified counterterrorism efforts in 1994. It ramped up steadily to $393 million by 1997. But that $79 million stuck in my mind.

We spent $70 million on Ken Starr and countless amounts of public and governmental time on this investigation of Presidential moral turpitude. So maybe, as we reflect on how we got to 9/11, we should also reflect on this focus of resources and attention on the personal mistakes of a handful of people, too.

Clinton was a pretty slimy guy in a lot of ways. In his personal life, he’s what I call a user. Of course, all politicians are users…but he had a way of hanging his good buddies out to dry. Not a trait I consider admirable, but that’s just my opinion.

From the standpoint of what’s good for the country, my take on the 9/11 rehash is that we all made a mistake…Last time I checked, L’Affaire cost us no State secrets, nor lost any American lives. At least, not directly because the President cheated on his wife.

And while we wasted money and time on the fascination with prurience that enveloped the soul of the neocon movement, our real enemies pursued plots against us. Real plots with real dangers.

Maybe you think pornography and weak morals will bring down this country. I do not. Frankly, and I know this is harsh, we would all be safer if Americans took care of their own morality and let the government take care of (and limited itself to) defending us against threats like terrorism and acts of war.

History has not spoken its final word on the matter, just yet. Perhaps it’s worth having the government involved in fighting gay marriage and messing with people’s sex lives and defending prayer in the school and fighting a war on pornography. But the evidence so far shows that the terrorists that have attacked this country are pretty uninterested in those issues.

Of course, those are terrible things to them, but we are not earning our infidel stripes because we let gays live, but not marry, or women get abortions or adults buy pornography.

And they like prayer in the school just fine. In fact, at their schools all they do is pray, they don’t even learn anything that might put a meal in front of the many hungry people in their antidemocratic and destitute dictatorships and theocracies.

But I digress. Nothing Clinton did in his private life, which we wasted so much time and money on, not even the lies he blatantly told the Feds when they caught him at adultery, had one damned thing to do with the threats to this country then, or the ones that we face now.

The only thing our relentless pursuit of moral turpitude did during the Clinton years, and is doing now, is to distract us from the real threats and the real war between our culture of freedom (including the freedom to be a damned and immoral fool, in my opinion) and the cultures of enslavement practiced by those who wish us harm and call us “infidels” for not seeing things their way—and ultimately submitting to their rule. ¶ 10:09 AM