Iraq

Thursday

Alex Massie

Iraq and conservatism?

At Tapped Mori Dinaeur says no-one should be surprised by John McCain's lack of interest in policy detail. Well fine. The there's this, however: After Iraq and Katrina, I don't think the public needs to be convinced of the link between conservatism [and] the failure of government. Half of this, at least, is entirely wrong. The Iraq War has little or nothing to do with conservative, or governmental failure, rather it was the result, in more than just part, of an overweening, arrogant belief in the power of government to achieve anything it set its mind to.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Rupert Murdoch’s Curious NATO Vision

From James Joyner: News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch says that NATO is in a “crisis of confidence” because Western Europe is “losing its faith in the values and institutions that have kept us free.” He calls for a radical redefinition of the Alliance in order to save it, including extending membership to Australia, Japan, and Israel. Murdoch, who is receiving the Atlantic Council of the United States’ Distinguished Business Leader Award for 2008, says in his prepared remarks that, “We must face up to a painful truth: Europe no longer has either the political will or social culture to support military engagements in defense of itself and its allies. However strong NATO may be on paper, this fact makes NATO weak in practice.

Friday

Alex Massie

Lessons from the Tomb Raider

It's easy, of course, to mock actors and pop stars and their worthy pretensions to saving the planet. But whatever else one may say of her, I think it's true that Angelina Jolie takes her role as a UNHCR "ambassador" more seriously than most. Anyway, she has an interesting and persuasive op-ed in the Washington Post today: My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis. Today's humanitarian crisis in Iraq -- and the potential consequences for our national security -- are great.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Belfast on the Euphrates?

Matt Yglesias sees walls going up in Baghdad and wonders if the US Army is using Northern Ireland as its template: I believe this technique comes to the US Army's counterinsurgency theorists via Belfast, where I believe they have been effective in helping the British maintain a degree of order. To some extent, this brings us back to the question of strategy. If tactics employed in Northern Ireland can be made to work in Iraq (and maybe they can) even though Iraq has ten times as many people as Northern Ireland does and even though Iraqis don't speak English and even though the sectarian violence in Iraq is undergirded by concrete fighting over valuable resources, then does this really seem like a wise strategic undertaking? It doesn't seem that way to me.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Comment is free, facts are extremely expensive

I agree with Garance that there's lots of interest in Bill Keller's Hugo Young lecture. And like her I was struck by this passage: The New York Times has six correspondents assigned to Iraq, plus a rotating cast of photographers, plus Pentagon correspondents who regularly travel with the troops. We employ, in addition, about 80 brave Iraqis - many of them handpicked stringers based in towns that are no longer safe for westerners. Sustaining the Baghdad bureau costs several million dollars a year. We take extraordinary precautions to keep our people safe, but two of our Iraqi colleagues have been murdered in cold blood, almost certainly because they worked for an American organisation.

Monday

Alex Massie

Death by Moron

While I'm at it, here's more deranged idiocy from The Corner. A fellow named Peter Wehner, who until March 2007 apparently served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Strategic Initiatives, has this to say about The New Republic and the gruesome Scott Beauchamp affair: What The New Republic didn’t understand, and still seems unable to grasp, is that they and others saw this for what it was: an effort to use Beauchamp’s story to paint an ugly portrait of those serving in Iraq. The magazine had turned against the war, and this piece would help turn people against those serving in the war. What has happened instead is that the situation in Iraq is turning around — and the TNR piece has utterly collapsed.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Forget 42nd St, Rush to See the 42nd Highland Regiment

As someone who has, er, fond teenage memories of being barked at by NCOs from the Black Watch during hours of drill on the parade-ground and rather fonder recollections of cricket matches against the regiment, I've been looking forward for months to seeing Gregory Burke's prize-winning play about the regiment's experiences in Iraq during its current run in New York. Today's good news then is that - hurrah! - I snagged one of the two remaining tickets for the shows' final performance on, appropriately enough, Remembrance Sunday. So it's really just a bonus that the New York reviews have been tremendous. Here's Ben Brantley in the NYT: “Black Watch,” which was the hit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year and runs through Nov.

Thursday

Alex Massie

An American Life and Death

Christopher Hitchens' piece in this month's Vanity Fair is quite something. Mark Daily, a young officer in the Seventh Cavalry, volunteered for the army despite his reservations about the wisdom of the war in part because some of Christopher's articles inspired him to do so. Hitch's latest piece reflects on that heavy burden (shared to one degree or another by all of us who supported the war) and on the life and death of a remarkable young American. If you read one thing today, make it this article. Here's Christopher describing his first meeting with the Daily family: As soon as they arrived, I knew I had been wrong to be so nervous. They looked too good to be true: like a poster for the American way.

Friday

Alex Massie

Iraq’s magic schools

President George W Bush has just finished his post-Petraeus address to the nation. Yet again he reported that progress was being made in Iraq - far from the headlines of course - and that this could be measured by the fact that, yes, schools are being rebuilt. Given the frequency with which this nugget of good news is displayed one might conclude that every school in Iraq must have been rebuilt and reopened at least three times. Other, more considered thoughts, later. PS: Megan is not too impressed that Iraq has passed a budget. Or rather, as she says, that's a low bar for progress...

Alex Massie

President Micawber speaks!

George W Bush's speech on Iraq and Petraeus and all the rest of it yesterday had a pretty simple message. Hold tight. Stay patient. Endure. Something extraordinary will turn up. Since the President's transformation into Mr Micawber seems complete, this passage from David Copperfield seems somewhat troublesomely apposite. If Mr Bush is Mr Micawber; then the American (and Iraqi) people are the other Micawbers: Mr Micawber...then addressed himself to me, and proffered me the satisfaction of "witnessing the re-establishment of mutual confidence between himself and Mrs Micawber". After which, he invited the company generally to the contemplation of that affecting spectacle.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Iraq as cause of Scottish independence? Hmmmm…

Ben Crair has a piece at TNR today headlined, The Iraq War is Responsible for Scottish Independence. Really. Well, up to a point Lord Copper. The "Really" is an unfortunate indication that this pudding may be a little over-egged. Few people would deny that discontent with the war played a part in the SNP's victory in this year's elections. But other factors were at least as, and probably more, important. Among them: 1. Alex Salmond's return from his Westminster exile. Salmond brings a heavyweight presence that trumped anything the SNP could put up in his absence; it trumped Jack McConnell's pretensions to statesman status too. You wouldn't feel embarrassed being represented by Salmond. Alas, the same could not be said of McConnell. 2.

Monday

Alex Massie

The Seriousness of “The Decider”

No need for comment, is there? Mr. Bush has often said that will be for historians decide, but he said during his sessions with Mr. Draper that they would have to consult administration documents to get to the bottom of some important questions. Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.” But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?

Friday

Alex Massie

Heads I win, tails you lose

Karl Rove is a remarkable man. On his last day in the White House, National Review Online publishes a piece in which Rove claims that history will judge Bush favourably if Iraq proves a success: History’s concern is with final outcomes, not the missteps or advances of the moment. History will render a favorable verdict if the outcome in the Middle East is similar to what America saw after World War II. OK. You'd expect that.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Declare victory and just go home?

According to a new Zogby poll, 11% of Americans think the US has already won in Iraq. This confirms my long-held view that a non-trivial percentage of the population can be persuaded of absolutely anything. Other findings include: Asked which of the 2008 presidential candidates would best handle the war in Iraq, Rudy Giuliani topped the list with 14% support, followed by Fred Thompson (11%), Hillary Clinton (10%), Barack Obama (9%), John McCain and Joe Biden (7%), John Edwards (5%), and Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich at 4%. But overall, more Americans said they were unsure (15%) than supported any single candidate to best handle the war.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Biden’s son to serve in Iraq

From the AP: The son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is preparing for deployment to Iraq next year. Capt. Beau Biden, a Judge Advocate General in the Delaware National Guard and the state's attorney general, is part of the 261st Signal Brigade that has been told to prepare for duty in Iraq in 2008. They have not been given a date of deployment yet. "I don't want him going," Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said from the campaign trail Wednesday, according to a report on Radio Iowa. "But I tell you what, I don't want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years and so how we leave makes a big difference." As GFR points out, that's a bit different from Mitt Romney's sons serving their country by selling Mormonism. But enough of policy... Biden named his son Beau?

Wednesday

Alex Massie

We can’t turn them away (but we will unless you do something about it)

If you're a British resident or citizen (subject, surely?) might I suggest you add your name to the petition calling upon Her Majesty's Government to provide refuge in the United Kingdom for those Iraqi translators and other Iraqi civilians who have risked their lives working for the British armed forces in southern Iraq and who, consequently, have much to fear if left in Iraq. You might also want to write to your MP. This isn't a matter of whether one was for the war or against it. It's a matter of simple decency, honour and obligation: all of which makes one think that absent significant public and media pressure the government will, in traditional style, find a way to do the shabby thing. That is, after all, the current default position.

Alex Massie

White House does best to undermine public confidence in own strategy

I'm quite prepared to believe there has been some military progress in Iraq and that it might be possible for the US to move some troops from some areas to others where they could be more profitably engaged. But I'd be much more comfortable taking General David Petraeus's report at face value if the Los Angeles Times were not reporting that: Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Cheney’s anti-war argument…

Cheney makes the anti-war case rather convincingly (in the light of recent events). Of course he's speaking in 1994, explaining why the first Bush administration declined to press for regime change in Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait (or, rather, after restoring Kuwait to its own less than liberal regime): Now, sure, this clip is doubtless amusing many people. But perhaps Cheney was wrong twice? Wrong not to have pressed on to Baghdad in 1991 and wrong to have supported doing so in 2003. Perhaps all he predicts in this exchange would have come to pass. On the other hand, perhaps the George HW Bush administration would have managed any resulting chaos rather more effectively than has George W Bush's.