As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update
It's concerning enough that the Pakistani Taliban has responded to the offensive against them in the Swat Valley with bombings in Lahore and Peshawar. Clearly they are embedded enough in local populations to carry out attacks without a base of operations in Swat, even in cities like Peshawar which are not Taliban strongholds. Juan Cole makes the argument that this could all turn public opinion against the Taliban, which is possible.
While is is possible that the public will blame the government for stirring up so much trouble with the Swat campaign, it is also possible that the public will turn decisively on the Taliban. There are precedents for such loss of popularity. After the 1997 attack on innocent tourists in Luxor, Egypt, the Egyptian public turned against the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Grouping (al-Gama'a al-Islamiya), the two small terrorist groups that had committed many acts of violence in the 1970s and 1980s and had assassinated President Anwar el Sadat in 1981. EIJ declined into irrelevance in Egypt, and al-Gama'a al-Islamiya's leadership has renounced violence.
But what REALLY bothers me is the series of attacks over the border, in Iran. A Shiite mosque in Zahedan was struck earlier in the week, and yesterday, gunmen fired on a campaign office for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Preelection tensions rose Friday in Iran's religiously and ethnically mixed southeast after gunmen opened fire on the president's campaign office and a radical group claimed responsibility for the bombing of a mosque the day before that killed up to 23 people and injured scores.
Iranian authorities blamed the United States for the violence in Zahedan, on the border with Pakistan.
"The hands of America and Israel were undoubtedly involved in this incident," prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told supporters in Tehran, referring to Thursday's bombing of a Shiite mosque. "Although Wahhabis and the infidel and evil Salafis were an accomplice to the crime, they were being led from somewhere else."
Wahhabi and Salafi are puritanical schools of Sunni Islam rooted in Saudi Arabia. They have inspired Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network, as well as the Taliban and other groups that denounce Shiite Islam, the majority sect in Iran [...]
Hours earlier, the Sunni militant group Jundallah, which is linked to Al Qaeda and draws support from Iran's ethnic Baluch minority, claimed responsibility for the mosque bombing on a Shiite holiday. It made the claim in a phone call to the United Arab Emirates-based Al Arabiya satellite news channel.
The caller claimed that the victims were hard-line pro-government militiamen discussing the June 12 election.
Now, this province is basically lawless anyway, so I don't want to make too much of it. But I fear that this widens the larger Shiite-Sunni struggle inside Islam, but that hardliner cleric trying to push blame onto the Americans is a ploy to increase tensions and move away from any reconciliation and negotiation. You can clearly see the tensions between Shiite Iran and their Sunni competitors here. You can also see it in Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki throwing up his hands at any further gestures to the Saudis, accusing them of allowing Sunni insurgents to flow through their borders. This is something that many of us worried about at the start of the Iraq conflict, the spread of sectarian violence throughout the region. I really hope this is not the beginning.
BAGHDAD — April was the bloodiest month for violence in Baghdad in more than a year, another sign that Iraq's security gains are beginning to reverse.
President Barack Obama acknowledged Wednesday night that violence has risen in recent weeks, but he said the levels of violence were still below last year's.
Calling recent bombings "a legitimate cause for concern," Obama said "civilian deaths . . . remain very low compared to what was going on last year."
But statistics kept by McClatchy show that in Baghdad alone, more than 200 people have been killed in attacks so far this month, compared with 99 last month and 46 in February, according to a McClatchy count.
The last time McClatchy recorded more than 200 civilian deaths in one month in the capital was more than a year ago, in March 2008.
To maintain credibility in foreign policy, Presidents must talk straight with the American people. There's a reason for the rising violence, and that's the failure of the surge to effect a meaningful political reconciliation, which is leading to an increase in sectarian violence. Obama could make that case, and tweak his Iraq plans to increase the diplomatic efforts to force those political solutions. In fact, by dispatching Hillary Clinton to Iraq last week, he's doing that. But he shouldn't minimize the scope of the violence in Iraq right now. That's disingenuous and distorting.
I'm still trying to get back in the swing, but I am troubled by this story about the US and the Iraqis negotiating exceptions to the June deadline to remove troops from the major cities in Iraq.
The United States and Iraq will begin negotiating possible exceptions to the June 30 deadline for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraqi cities, focusing on the troubled northern city of Mosul, according to military officials. Some parts of Baghdad also will still have combat troops.
Everywhere else, the withdrawal of United States combat troops from all Iraqi cities and towns is on schedule to finish by the June 30 deadline, and in many cases even earlier. But because of the level of insurgent activity in Mosul, United States and Iraqi military officials will meet Monday to decide whether to consider the city an exception to the deadline in the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, between the countries.
“Mosul is the one area where you may see U.S. combat forces operating in the city” after June 30, the United States military’s top spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. David Perkins, said in an interview.
In Baghdad, however, there are no plans to close the Camp Victory base complex, consisting of five bases housing more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops. Although Victory is only a 15 minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city’s boundary, Iraqi officials say they have agreed to consider it outside the city.
Mosul remains troubled, and the recent rise in Baghdad may necessitate troops staying through the elections. But this is a slippery slope. This past weekend, I talked with Bill Hedrick, a candidate for Congress in CA-44 who has two sons and two daughters-in-law with a combined 10 tours of duty in Iraq. He told me how concerned he is about the residual forces, about continuing the occupation, and about these efforts at exceptions and delays and moving of the markers. He brought up the examples of Korea and Germany, and our continued presence in those countries, however friendly.
I would imagine this would concern the Iraqis as well. I'm sure many of them think that the US will never leave, and this adds to that frustration. Which can easily turn to violence. I fully understand that the sectarian conflict is rising but we can do little about that from a military perspective. Not to mention that the Prime Minister is thundering against a raid carried out by US forces:
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's prime minister denounced a deadly U.S. raid on Sunday as a "crime" that violated the security pact with Washington and demanded American commanders hand over those responsible to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.
The U.S. military, however, strongly denied that it overstepped its bounds and said it notified Iraqi authorities in advance — in accordance with the rules that took effect this year governing U.S. battlefield conduct.
The pre-dawn raid in the southern Shiite city of Kut ended with at least one woman dead after being caught in gunfire and six suspects arrested for alleged links to Shiite militia factions [...]
A statement from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — in his role as commander general of Iraqi forces — called the raid a "violation of the security pact."
He asked the U.S. military "to release the detainees and hand over those responsible for this crime to the courts," according to an Iraqi security official who read the statement to The Associated Press.
Under the Status of Forces Agreement, the US must notify the Iraqi government before it takes military action.
Al-Maliki is touchy about such an operation in Kut and probably wants personal approval in such matters. Kut is in the Shiite south, where al-Maliki has been attempting to spread the influence of his Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa). It has a significant Sadrist constituency, and al-Maliki is trying to put together coalition provincial governments with the Sadrists. So the US raid made al-Maliki look weak and puppet-like and made him unpopular in a key area where he wants support.
Maliki is not necessarily a good faith actor. He refuses to reconcile with Baathists and Sunnis, and he wants to consolidate power. The information on the raid in Kut never went up the chain of command from local Iraqi officials, but Maliki wouldn't have minded if this had taken place elsewhere. He is out for his own power and not a broader reconciliation among the Iraqis. He is a dangerous partner, and this tantrum further breaches the trust that Iraqis have in the Americans leaving. That could lead to violence very quickly.
The ruling Shiite government gained responsibility for paying the Sunni Awakening forces. They stiffed most of them and even started arresting some of the Sunni leadership. And then...
A series of six car bombs exploded in or near Baghdad on Monday, killing more than 30 people and wounding scores more, according to witnesses and the police.
Three bombs struck markets in predominately Shiite neighborhoods around Baghdad, but there did not appear to be any obvious pattern to the attacks. The blasts began shortly after dawn and continued in disparate parts of the city into the afternoon.
Um, I think there IS an obvious pattern to the attacks.
The spike in attacks in Iraq seems to me to be DIRECTLY attributable to the tension between the Shiite ruling government and the Sunni Sons of Iraq. While this guest poster at Informed Comment claims that the disputes in Iraq are about control of resources and power, that seems to me a distinction without a difference. Right now, Maliki and the Shiites are in power, and the Sons of Iraq/Awakening forces are dependent upon them. And they certainly have back channels to what's left of the insurgency, and the increased fighting represents another stage in that power relationship. It does nobody good to turn Iraq into the forgotten war that Afghanistan used to be. The Maliki government needs to be pressured into meeting their responsibilities to keep the country secure and stable, and having a US Ambassador in place would maybe help. So stop grandstanding, Senate GOP. People's lives are at stake.
No doubt under duress from the Americans, the Iraqi government abruptly released a Sunni Muslim Awakening Council leader and dropped all charges. Of course, he's just one of the several they've captured.
While freeing Raad Ali, the Shiite-led government continued to hold another Sunni leader, whose arrest Saturday triggered an uprising that left at least 17 people wounded, and it's arrested a number of other Sunni paramilitary leaders and members this week.
The turmoil is fueling fears that rising tensions between Sunnis and Shiites and between Sunni Arabs and Kurds could trigger a new round of violence and even disrupt the Obama administration's plans to draw down American forces in Iraq.
Ali, the head of the Sons of Iraq in the Ghazaliyah neighborhood in northwest Baghdad, returned home to a rain of celebratory shooting by neighbors and supporters. He told McClatchy that he'd been charged with seven crimes, including kidnapping a man who'd already accused someone else of the crime, planting roadside bombs, displacing Shiite families and killing two police officers, one of whom had been his own follower.
He said that all of the charges were bogus. He was treated well while in prison and was able to plead his case before a judge Wednesday, he said.
What's worrying is that the arrests are continuing. Another 50 were arrested yesterday in Ameriyah, a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. Ali was a US ally, but he's but one of what is now ranging into hundreds of detainees. And he is correct that this could spark a new round of violence.
"The Awakening succeeded to make everything good and clean the face of the government," Ali said. "They (the Iraqi government) are crazy, they are foolish, they don't need to target us . . . . we help you and support you why do you want to target us?"
He said he'd told U.S. officials many times that the Iraqi government's apparent plan was to "arrest big leaders," and that this would "destroy" the U.S. project to end the Sunni insurgency. But the American said he was wrong, he said.
I hope somebody at the highest levels of the White House is paying attention to this. It could explode.
An American military aircraft opened fire Thursday night on Sons of Iraq members who were allegedly spotted placing a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Friday.
The incident, which killed one suspected member of the paramilitary group and wounded two, is the latest sign of the fraying allegiance between the paramilitary groups and the U.S. military.
Sectarian Strife In Iraq Does Not Presume A Continued Military Presence
Brian Katulis, one of my favorite foreign policy wonks, has a very good paper spinning off of the incident in Baghdad over the weekend, which signaled a breakdown in relations between the Shiite central government and the Sunni Awakening forces. Katulis argues that this was inevitable:
The standoff between two U.S. “allies” this weekend in the heart of Baghdad is a harbinger of things to come in Iraq. The showdown between Iraq’s central government security forces and members of Sunni militias, known as "Awakenings," had nothing to do with the size of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and almost everything to do with enduring tensions in Iraq—multiple struggles for power between competing Iraqi factions.
What happened this weekend in central Baghdad between Iraqi security forces and members of the Sunni Awakening groups was not unexpected, in large part because many of the tactics used in the 2007 “surge” of U.S. forces built a shaky and unstable foundation. Violence broke out in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil—just a few miles north of the Green Zone—when Iraqi troops backed by U.S. forces arrested Adil Mashadani, an “Awakening” militia leader on charges of terrorist and sectarian crimes. According to news reports, Mashadani allegedly maintained ties with Al Qaeda forces, helped plan roadside bombing attacks against Iraqi security forces, and ran an extortion racket that squeezed Fadhil residents for tens of thousands of dollars.
Whether these specific charges against Mashadani are true or not, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone like Mashadani was on the payroll of the U.S. taxpayers. I argued in a paper on the Awakening groups more than a year ago that the same U.S. tactics that contributed to the so-called “success” of the surge were actually undermining the process of helping Iraq bridge internal divisions. The tactics employed during the surge helped create alternate centers of power in supporting new militias, which built a shaky foundation that led to short-term security gains at the expense of longer-term political stability.
Iraq still exhibits a stark divide between competing sectarian factions, and the surge did nothing to assuage that. Instead we paid off the Awakening forces to provide the illusion of stability without really addressing the root causes that could make such stability lasting. And we allowed delay on the fundamental political solutions that need to be made between Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq. As Thomas Ricks says, "That is Iraq 2009. Does it sound peaceful to you? Does it seem like the political questions vexing Iraq have been solved?" And he also thinks the Sadrists could take advantage of the chaos.
If the Awakening fighting spreads, I wouldn't be surprised to see Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia re-emerge. I've always thought the Sunni Awakening forced him to go to ground, because he didn't want to be the only guy taking on American forces. But if the Sunnis are on the attack again, it might be game on for him as well. I am reminded of Ambassador Ryan Crocker's worry, expressed in my new book and elsewhere, that the future of Iraq was something like Lebanon. That is, it has a government, but it is shaky, and there is violence in the streets, with some political parties having armed wings that are outside the control of the government.
That's probably accurate, and yet it's important to note that we don't have 140,000 troops in Lebanon right now, and when we tried to put troops there we eventually were forced to leave, and Ronald Reagan made that call and I would argue that it was the right one. Anyone using the continued sectarian strife in Iraq to call for a continued military commitment from the US is not being mindful of other realities. As Katulis notes, the Iraqis set the withdrawal date, not us. We have bigger challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan that push against a giant commitment in Iraq. In addition, our military presence probably inflames this situation. The US should be engaged diplomatically to force a solution between the factions, but our military is essentially being used as a pawn for Nouri al-Maliki as he jockeys for power. Without soveriegnty, and without the US military as a crutch, Iraq will simply never be stable.
I know the Iraq war is over and everything, but this strikes me as a notable development:
Sunni militants staged a violent uprising in central Baghdad Saturday after Iraqi forces detained a leader of the Sons of Iraq, a mostly Sunni paramilitary force that until recently had received salaries from the United States and is now on the Iraqi government payroll.
Sixteen people were injured in the battle in the once volatile Fadhl neighborhood, and five Iraqi soldiers were missing - snatched Saturday night by members of the Sons of Iraq, a security official said.
The arrest of Adel Mashhadani, who leads the force in Fadhl, and his assistant, heightened fears among Sunnis that the Iraqi government plans to divide and disband the movements now that its taken control of all but a few thousand of the 94,000 members across the country.
Earlier in the week we learned that Sunni Awakening forces weren't receiving the jobs promised to them by the central government. Falling oil prices have lessened the funds for the government, and they are having trouble paying existing employees, so payouts and make-work jobs for Sunni militants are unlikely. And this has caused anger and distrust.
The point of the Sunni Awakening was one of reconciliation, to re-integrate former militiamen into Iraqi society. If each of them could be arrested for past criminal actions, is there any way to avoid massive resistance and a resumption of Sunni-Shiite conflict, as well as violence against US forces (which occurred yesterday as well)?
"They sold him," said Khaled Jamal Qaisi, Mashhadani's deputy, referring to the U.S. military.
"The Americans are vile people and they betrayed our trust," Qaisi said. "We are the ones who fought al Qaida. They want things to return as they used to be? If they don't release Adel al Mashhadani today, you will all be prisoners in your homes."
This could be a blip, and Mashhadani could be a legitimate criminal. But when I start to see pitched gun battles in the streets of Baghdad again, I get nervous.
The newspapers are reporting a big win for Prime Minister Maliki in the provincial elections, and predictably are leaving out the nuance that such a victory entails. First of all they are claiming that this win for Maliki is a "loss for Iran," as if Iran doesn't have major ties to the Dawa Party and Maliki himself.
Second, while everyone is focusing on the Shiite Maliki/Sadr split - and really, Maliki had all the guns, so his victory was sealed when the US military helped him raid Basra - it's the marginalization of the Sunnis in Baghdad that could spark outrage and unrest, much like the apparent electoral fraud in Anbar:
The conventional wisdom has been that the provincial elections would redress the sectarian imbalance in the Baghdad Council -- which had only one Sunni, a Communist, out of 57 seats because of their boycott of the 2005 elections. Sunnis (many of whom continue to believe themselves a majority) expected to capture a significant share of the Baghdad council this time. Most U.S. analyses shared that expectation, which was the basis for hopes that the provincial elections would lock in the incorporation of Sunnis into the political process.
But a dramatic increase in Sunni representation (commensurate with their aspirations) was always unlikely for one big reason: the clearly visible refusal to take serious measures to allow refugees or internally displaced persons to vote. IDPs were technically enfranchised, but the rule that they vote in their place of origin and the inefficiency of the bureaucracy ensured that few actually would. In September, Brian Katulis and I warned that failure to deal effectively with the IDP problem would "essentially ratify the country's new sectarian map" created by the bloody sectarian cleansing of 2006-07. According to IOM's authoritative surveys, about 64% of Iraqi displaced come from Baghdad -- and it is in Baghdad where the effects of their disenfranchisement are most being felt. With less than 10% (or even 20%) of the seats in the Baghdad council, Sunnis may well feel that this warning has come true. How will they react?
The unexpectedly strong showing of Maliki may reflect a popular yearning for a strong central government. But add on the unexpectedly strong showing of the Islamic Party in Anbar, and it is difficult to not wonder whether there is more to the strong showing of the incumbent parties than their popularity. Months of "shaping operations" and state-funded patronage may have had something to do with it as well. But either way, the provincial elections seem likely to shift attention to exactly the question we worried about last fall: how will frustrated challengers react to their failure to obtain the share of state power that they had expected? Ahmed Abu Risha, head of the Iraqi Awakening Conference and a key American ally in Sunni Iraq, has already proposed one answer: "We will form the government of Anbar anyway...An honest dictatorship is better than a democracy won through fraud." That beats the "Darfur" and "graveyards" and "streets running with blood" of which others speak, I suppose... but none are quite what the cheerleaders for this process seem to have had in mind.
The Sunni Awakening was predicated on hopes that they would get a share of power somewhere down the line. If they are shut out of the political process, who's to say they won't turn to other means?
...It looks like some thumbs were placed on the scales in Anbar, giving the election to a third party and not the Awakening coalition or the Iraqi Islamic Party. Lynch:
I never expected the provincial elections to solve all of Iraq's problems, and they didn't. The elections have created new problems that need to be recognized and dealt with -- especially Sunni frustration in Baghdad, intra-Sunni strife in Anbar, perceptions of electoral fraud in support of incumbents, IDP and refugee disenfranchisement, and the impact of the election of a strongly anti-Kurdish front up north. But that doesn't mean that disaster is lurking around every corner -- with luck, these new problems can be dealt with constructively.
Lest my coverage appear too negative, let me say that I'm very pleased to see the collapse of ISCI across much of the country and hopefully the end of its designs on creating a Shia super-region. And I'm happy with the strengthening of forces calling for a stronger central state -- since I've been arguing for years that the consolidation of a Weberian Iraqi state is the key to establishing the conditions for successfully extracting the U.S. military. With luck, the coalition-building phase can allow points of entry for some of the potentially frustrated challengers.
I'm sincerely hoping that all the parties involved can work out their conflicts peacefully and that the results are accepted as broadly legitimate -- both of which require frank, honest looks at what really happened and why. And then with the elections out of the way, the U.S. should move on to the business of starting its troop withdrawals and setting a new course.
UPDATE: This Anthony Zinni story is completely weird. He was offered the Ambassador job in Iraq and then never heard anything until he found out he was replaced by Christopher Hill (who ran the North Korea diplomacy)? How could they do that? Zinni is a valuable asset for Democrats on national security. Is the Obama team going to disrespect every Democratic general one by one?
The Iraqi Parliament did pass the withdrawal agreement mandating the end of a US military presence in Iraq by the end of 2011, but Juan Cole notes that the Sunnis extracted a price for their support.
Of 275 members of parliament, 198 attended and 145 voted in favor. That means it barely passed from the point of view of an absolute majority, though it was a clear simple majority. Apparently the al-Maliki government bowed to Sunni Arab demands that the agreement be submitted to a national referendum, California-style. If that is true, it is possible that it could still be rejected by the Iraqi people. But al-Maliki got it through parliament by painting opponents as implicitly opposing a US withdrawal, and that campaign tactic may work with the general public, too.
I think such a tactic is more likely to work with skittish politicians than an Iraqi public which wants the occupying forces out, and knows that if they vote down the agreement the forces would have to leave immediately. The Sunnis demanded other concessions from the Shiite government in exchange for their votes, including the release of political prisoners and an end to Shiite suppression of the minority, and when those promises get predictably reneged, that would threaten the referendum's passage as well.
It is, however, interesting that the Shiites, Sunnis, politicians throughout the Parliament, and every individual Iraqi will have a chance to weigh in on this security agreement with the United States, yet basically one "decider" in this country is allowed to do so.
We are, however, a shining city on a hill, so that balances things out.
As I remember, right around the same time as Katrina there was this horrible bridge collapse in southern Baghdad that killed upwards of 900 people. It wasn't from a bombing, just a rumor of a suicide attack that caused a stampede. Three years later, in the middle of a war zone, that bridge has been reopened as a source of hope for the remaining residents.
It's not much, but when there's so much bleakness in Iraq, it's comforting to see Sunnis and Shiites walking together.
While in retrospect this seems obvious, until this point I hadn't factored in that the Iraqis were waiting out the election results like the rest of us, and making sure that they would have an honest broker.
Barack Obama may have been elected only three days ago, but his victory is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.
Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.
"Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011," said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. "If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama."
Spencer Ackerman has more on this. For background, understand that this deal was dead, completely, and the American forces were by the end of the year going to be in the country illegally. Plus, with bombings ticking back up the country was starting to move into a tailspin. Now, with Obama's presence, the deal really becomes a withdrawal timeline. And it looks like he'll have a mandate for change in Iraq as well:
Obama won’t be able to enter office with the Iraq problem solved. But it will be well on its way to being solved. The strategic framework for his desired withdrawal will be in place. And since he and the Iraqi government see eye to eye on the issue, Obama will have the credibility in place to work toward a political compact among the different Iraqi factions — something the Bush administration hasn’t ever had and a McCain administration wouldn’t ever have had.
That’s not to say Obama will achieve it, just that the stars are better aligned now.
So the Sunnis in Iraq aren't talking to us anymore because US military forces killed a man who allegedly opened fire on troops as they attempted to arrest someone they considered as an insurgent leader (the Sunnis retell the story differently). The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni bloc in Parliament, has suspended all contacts with the US.
Pakistan has suspended all military action against militants along their border with Afghanistan and passed a resolution calling for dialogue with those groups. The near-unanimous opinion of the Parliament was that Pakistan was paying too heavy a price for "America's war" and that "We need to prioritise our own national security interests."
And OPEC, a cartel that includes Iraq - that country we "liberated" and is supposed to, in George Bush's mind, hold some sort of gratitude for us - is cutting oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day because the price feel unacceptably to around $65/barrel.
Um, does anybody still think that the Russian invasion of Georgia was the greatest foreign policy crisis since the end of the Cold War?
If the Iraq debate wasn't over in this country, you would think that this new pact giving the US a pretty firm deadline for withdrawal from the country by the end of 2011, only slightly less accelerated than Barack Obama's own withdrawal plan, would be significant. After all, it's a complete repudiation of the deeply held strategy of the Bush Administration and John McCain, that firm deadlines would be disastrous for America because the terrorists will "wait us out." There's also the matter of giving the Iraqis jurisdiction over their own country, by taking the military out of the prison business and subjecting US soldiers to prosecution, which at one time was anathema to the Bushies.
Iraq said it had secured the right to prosecute U.S. soldiers for serious crimes under certain circumstances, an issue both sides had long said was holding up the pact [...]
On the immunity of U.S. forces, Dabbagh said: "Inside their bases, they will be under American law. Iraqi judicial law will be implemented in case these forces commit a serious and deliberate felony outside their military bases and when off duty."
None dare call it treason except maybe all conservatives.
But the bigger story here is that the Iraqi Parliament, who unlike the Congress actually gets a chance to ratify this thing, appears to be balking:
BAGHDAD — Hopes that a security agreement between Iraq and the United States could be concluded swiftly receded Sunday as several of the leading Iraqi political parties, including some that had negotiated the agreement, appeared to back away from quick approval.
In a public statement posted on semiofficial government Web sites, the United Iraqi Alliance, which represents several powerful Shiite parties that back the government, said it could not endorse the pact as written and wanted amendments. It formed a committee on Saturday to survey alliance member opinions.
“The alliance asked the prime minister to reopen the negotiations with the Americans and try to modify the pact until it becomes acceptable to us,” said Sami al-Askari, a leader in Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s Dawa Party, which is a member of the Shiite alliance.
Whether the agreement will be signed “will depend on the American side,” he said [...]
The largest Sunni bloc in Parliament, Tawafiq, also hesitated to endorse the agreement. The hesitation came as a surprise because until recently Sunnis had been supportive of the American presence since they viewed the troops as a bulwark against a repetition of the sectarian violence that forced many from their homes in and around Baghdad.
Can we face facts? The Iraqis don't want the Americans there. Maliki might, because he's using the US military to project power against his enemies. But the other parties really don't. The Sadrists really don't. The Sunnis, sensing Maliki's use of the military to crush them, also don't. And the Iraqi people are massively opposed. This is reflected by every single representative of the people hesitant to do anything in concert with the Americans.
Political analysts agree that the elections are making it difficult for Mr. Maliki to stand with the Americans, especially on an agreement that allows troops to stay. The election is likely early next year, and Mr. Maliki is worried about maintaining power.
“I think the main thing is that Maliki is worried about the provincial elections, and he doesn’t want to be seen as making concessions to the Americans,” said Joost Hiltermann, a senior Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group office in Istanbul, which oversees Iraq. The Iraqi resistance “is positioning,” he said. “But what is the endgame?”
This is also why Maliki criticized the top US general very strongly for suggesting that Iran played a role in the security agreement. It is positioning, but of course you have to recognize that all the positioning demands a move away from any American occupation presence.
So the national security functionaries can peddle around some draft document all they want, and very serious Villagers can talk about 6 more months to dig in for the big victory, but at some point you have to take a glimpse at reality: we are being told, politely, to leave Iraq, by pretty much everyone who matters. And so leave we must. With a far bigger disaster looming in Afghanistan, a country where the Taliban can behead dozens on any roadway, it's just completely absurd to hang on in Iraq where every major player is rejecting the occupation. I don't believe in "surging" into Afghanistan, for the record, and that's another failure of not heeding the truth of the situation on the ground. But nobody wants to see the truth in Iraq that is plainly visible - it's time to go.
There's a new study on Afghanistan warning of impending crisis, with an ineffective government losing power and influence to the Taliban, full-scale corruption and severe breakdowns in security. But there's also a report on Iraq that dampens the boasts of victory through surge that we keep hearing.
WASHINGTON -- A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year.
U.S. officials familiar with the new National Intelligence Estimate said they were unsure when the top-secret report would be completed and whether it would be published before the Nov. 4 presidential election.
Um, I can assure you that it won't be.
The report lays out the structural challenges which have let to be dealt with:
U.S. officials say last year's surge of 30,000 troops, all of whom have been withdrawn, was just one reason for the improvements. Other factors include the truce declared by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militia; and the enlistment of former Sunni insurgents in Awakening groups created by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida in Iraq and other extremists.
The draft NIE, however, warns that the improvements in security and political progress, such as the recent passage of a provincial-election law, are threatened by lingering disputes between the majority Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other minorities, the U.S. officials said.
Sources of tension identified by the NIE, they said, include a struggle between Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen for control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk; and the Shiite-led central government's unfulfilled vows to hire former Sunni insurgents who joined Awakening groups.
McCain will use this to walk that "we're winning but have not yet won" tightrope and argue that withdrawal equals surrender. But in actuality, our presence has done nothing to reduce sectarian tensions apart from the violence. The NIE is saying that the conditions still exist for civil war or sectarian strife, and having our troops act as a proxy army for Maliki, who wants to be a strongman, actually exacerbates the problem, increases frustrations, and heightens instability. Nobody has forced the factions to come together and reconcile - in fact, Bush decentralized the government but simultaneously empowered Maliki's militia and has now handed over control of the Sunni Awakening forces to him, which is bound to shock the system as the Prime Minister tries to consolidate power. Creating what amounts to a theocratic dictatorship allied with Iran is not a good prospect for Iraq or the world, and makes hollow the focus on violence and security in the short term.
Less violence, however, is not the same thing as success. The United States did not go to war in Iraq for the purpose of ending violence between contending sectarian forces. Success has to be measured against US objectives. John McCain proclaims his goal to be victory and says we are now winning in Iraq (a victory that will, of course, be lost if his allegedly pro-surrender opponent wins). He considers victory to be an Iraq that is "a democratic ally." George W. Bush has defined victory as a unified, democratic, and stable Iraq. Neither man has explained how he will transform Iraq's ruling theocrats into democrats, diminish Iran's vast influence in Baghdad, or reconcile Kurds and Sunnis to Iraq's new order. Remarkably, neither the Democrats nor the press has challenged them to do so [...]
From 2003 until 2007, the Bush administration helped Iraq's most pro-Iranian Shiite religious parties take and consolidate power. Naturally, the Shiites—and their Iranian backers—welcomed the US involvement, at least temporarily. Now the United States is putting heavier pressure on al-Maliki to include the Sunni enemy in Iraq's security forces. It has created a Sunni army that, as long as the US remains in Iraq, can only grow in strength. Al-Maliki and his allies want the US out of Iraq because the American presence has become dangerous.
Without American troops, the Iraqi army and police would be able to move against the Awakening. Should Sunni forces prove too powerful, Iran is always available to help [...]
Al-Maliki's agenda is transparent. The Kurds and Sunnis are obstacles to the ruling coalition's ambitions for a Shiite Islamic state. Al-Maliki wants to eliminate the Sunni militia and contain the Kurds politically and geographically. America's interest in defeating al-Qaeda is far less important to him than the Shiite interest in not having a powerful Sunni military that could overthrow Iraq's new Shiite order. The Kurds are too secular, too Western, and too pro-American for the Shiites to share power comfortably with them [...]
John McCain says that partly because of his persistent support of the surge, we are now winning the Iraq war. He defines victory as an Iraq that is a democratic ally. Yet he advocates continued US military support to an Iraqi government led by Shiite religious parties committed to the establishment of an Islamic republic. He takes a harder line on Iran than President Bush, but supports Iraqi factions that are Iran's closest allies in the Middle East. He praises the Awakening and but seems not to have realized that the Iraqi government is intent on crushing it. He has denounced the Obama-Biden plan for a decentralized state but has said nothing about how he would protect Iraq's Kurds, the only committed American allies in the country.
George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success—or a path to victory.
One great tidbit in there is that Maliki was kind of picked up at the last minute by the US when they needed a new Prime Minister, and that initially, they got his first name wrong. Yet in the name of increasing security, we've given him all kinds of power, seemingly ignorant that he's a longtime Dawa Party member who spent 20 years in exile in Iran.
Condi Rice is meanwhile crying that Iraq has been harder than she personally imagined. Perhaps it's because you have to actually pay attention to it.
I've been remiss in not writing more about Iraq lately, but Gen. Petraeus' recommendation to pause any drawdown in troops until Bush can hightail it out of office provides an opening. At first blush, you have to look at this and shake your head. Republicans spent a whole convention telling us that we're unquestionably winning in Iraq, and now the commander (with the President sure to follow) says that the situation is fragile and we have to wait another Friedman Unit before we start sending anyone home.
Now, Petraeus is right in a certain respect. Baghdad remains a dangerous place, and this campaign to evict squatters carries quite a bit of risk, as those displaced begin to return. The situation in Kirkuk is approaching a reckoning, with the Kurds seeing how Maliki routed them in Diyala and sensing that he will do the same there, depriving the autonomous region of their only oil-producing town. The Sunnis are raging over a friendly-fire incident where the US killed 6 members of their security forces, and while the US has handed over security for Anbar province to the Iraqis, that could intensify tensions, not dampen them, because Maliki is unlikely to integrate the Awakening forces he now essentially controls into the security apparatus. In fact, Maliki's swelled head is a serious threat to long-term stability in Iraq:
He is making himself the symbol of Iraqi nationalism by insisting on a date certain for withdrawal of US forces. Of course, this is more symbolic than real. Any deal will have plenty of loopholes in it. If Maliki wants to keep US forces around after 2011, and McCain is in the White House, he can do so. (Maybe not if Obama wins.) But the appearances are important here. He can go to the provincial elections (if they happen) and the national elections (if they happen) in 2009 saying that he is the man who got a timetable for American withdrawal. Moreover, he just replaced the Foreign Ministry team negotiating with the US side with his own team, headed by his national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Ruba'i and made up of experts not from the FM but from the prime minister's office. This is his negotiation now in a very personal way. Just today the first major oil deal of the post-Saddam era was announced, and it was with a Chinese company. Another bit of symbolism.
He has conducted a fairly successful campaign against the Sadrists, or at least it seems so far. He has skillfully used the new Iraqi forces and the US to cut at the power of the Mahdi Army and go after Sadrist leaders and officials. In doing so, he has also portrayed himself (with some accuracy) as the man who cleaned up militia misbehavior in Basra [...] He is now openly taking on the Sahwa (Awakening Councils) forces, demonstrating that he will not compromise on Shia Arab control of the Arab parts of Iraq. He is reneging on his earlier promises to integrate tens of thousands of Sahwa guys into the regular security forces [...] He is pushing a bit against his own allies in his coalition itself. There was a very interesting incident in Diyala province two weeks ago, covered by al-Hayat. The Iraqi forces in Diyala entered Kurdish areas in the province (Khanaqin) and ordered the peshmerga out. There was a stand-off, eventually settled when Massoud Barazani made a rare trip to Baghdad to work out the problem. But the taste left in the mouth of the Kurds was not a pleasant one, and Maliki has made it clear that the Iraqi Army can go wherever in Iraq he orders it (well, he hasn't tried to send it into the KRG) [...]
So we have what looks like a coherent strategy to go after opponents, weaken allies and portray oneself as the symbol of Iraqi nationalism in dealing with the U.S. Is Maliki overreaching? Despite the Mahdi Army setbacks, Sadrists could still do better at the polls (if they happen) than Maliki's candidates. The Sahwa people could return to insurgency, destroying the security advances of the last year. The Kurds could undercut Maliki's government in parliament. An ambitious army general could push him aside, if his control of the army is less than total. But so far, Maliki seems to be on a winning streak.
This is some solid analysis. The Bush Administration probably feels it is in their best interest to allow Maliki to rule as a strongman. They have always been attracted to dictatorial rule as a means of maintaining order. However, Maliki's tough moves against the Sunnis and Kurds could easily backfire. Maliki clearly thinks he can go it alone, and thus he's extracting all sorts of concessions on a status of forces agreement. I agree that the implementation of that agreement will depend on the US President, and Maliki is largely playing a political game to be the nationalist champion of Iraq.
The truth is, however, that such tension would end if the US simply left Iraq. Maliki is pushing to become the strongman right now because he has US backup. If we actually left instead of constantly pretending to leave he would be forced to negotiate with all sides of the conflict. Plus it would take the large target off the backs of the occupying force. Maliki's worrisome slide into dictatorship would be stifled, threats toward our troops would end, and the situation would force a negotiated solution far more than the current stalemate.
McCain and his team wants to focus on the decision of the surge, when that is irrelevant to what we need to do to go forward. I think the circumstances clearly argue for withdrawal, whereas McCain's position is that leaving is losing. Eventually this will catch up with him in November. He really has become marginalized as virtually the only political figure who wants to stay there indefinitely. It's not only stubborn, it's the wrong strategy for long-term stability.
With all the talk of withdrawal and whether the surge worked, maybe somebody could take a look at the political progress that neocons claim the Iraqis are making?
Iraq's parliament passed legislation Tuesday setting new rules for provincial elections, a step widely viewed here as critical to the country's process of political reconciliation.
But Kurdish lawmakers boycotted the vote over the status of Kirkuk, an oil-rich, ethnically mixed city that Kurdish leaders believe should come under the control of their autonomous regional government in northern Iraq. The move could undermine the legislation and delay the provincial elections, which had been expected this fall.
Given all this, there is no way provincial elections carry off in October, meaning that Sunnis will still have weakened representation in the Parliament through the rest of the year. They keep delaying and delaying the status of Kirkuk because everyone knows a solution will lead to bloodshed. To consign the Kurds in Kirkuk to essentially the same forces who repressed them under Saddam will be unacceptable. And Arabs who want to limit Kurdish influence want Kirkuk in their hands, largely due to the oil resources. It's untenable.
The point is that this vaunted political progress never actually gets to a point of conclusion, and Iraq muddles through, relying on US military to keep the tense situation under control. I would argue that an end date for removal of forces would actually force them to confront these difficult issues instead of the constant delay.
Keep an eye on the special meeting of the Kurdish Parliament called for today over Kurdish outrage over the Kirkuk provisions in the just-passed provincial elections law, which Kurdish leadership is calling a "coup against the Constitution." The Kurdish bloc is calling for a re-vote, which might make sense but would be of dubious legality. Some (overly excitable?) Arab and Iraqi reports suggest that in addition to Talabani vetoing the provincial election law (over which the Kurds walked out of Parliament) the Kurds could pull out of Maliki's government and potentially even bring it down. Wouldn't it be wild if the estimably pro-US Kurds, the biggest fans of a long-term American military presence, bring down Maliki at the height of his perceived power immediately after he expressed support for the removal of US troops by 2010... over a seemingly entirely unrelated issue?
Everybody Stop Talking About How The Surge Is Working
Because you look unbelievably stupid once inevitable violent events reappear. If nothing has been done to deal with the root causes of violence in Iraq, which is the case, then all the paint on all the schools in Baghdad isn't going to mean a thing. Extremists and militants are still capable of spectacular attacks, and the three-front war (Sunnis v. Shiites, Shiite militias v. Shiite militias, Mahdi Army v. US military) remain in place. The Sadrists are still a social and electoral force within Iraq, the Dawa elements still want to crush them, the Sunnis still don't trust the Shiites, the unity "government" is still non-functional.
McSame and his cast of characters are content to go down with this ship, but every time they put on the rose-colored glasses and sing the praises of the surge, something like this happens. And it's not abstract - 51 people DIED today. For no reason. Because of an unnecessary invasion and occupation.
• Iraqi soldiers are arresting Iraqi policemen and accusing them of being in league with the Mahdi Army and Shiite militias. This of course calms fears that the Iraqi security forces are dysfunctional and operating as arms of the central government's power-aggrandizement scheme.
• Our strategy in defending the Iraqis continues to be bombing the crap out of them and putting up giant walls to trap civilians in the areas we bomb, but it's OK because we're destroying Sadr City in order to save it, and anyway we have gated communities here in America so what's the diff between that and walling up Iraqis unwillingly?
• Combat fatalities in Anbar Province, supposed to be the model of security and stability, are edging up, suggesting that the fragile peace among former Sunni insurgents and the military is not holding, or Al Qaeda militants are not as "on the run" as we keep boasting.
How many times do we have to keep noting the constant ebb and flow of events in Iraq before we realize we're providing nothing of value to the long-term stability of the country?
There's of course a lot of consternation about the debate. But a far more important comment, a far more revealing comment, came out of that other abomination this week, the Hardball College Tour circle jerk between Tweety Bird and John McCain, where St. Maverick let his most contemptuous slip show:
MCCAIN: We can look back at the past and argue about whether we should have gone to war or not, whether we should have invaded or not, and that's a good academic argument.
It sure is. I can't wait for the lecture series:
Five Thousand Dead Americans, Hundreds of Thousands of Dead Iraqis, Trillions of Dollars in Treasure to Create An Iranian Client State: What Was the Purpose of This Lecture?
The only ones debating the invasion as an academic argument are the academes in establishment Washington who don't want the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history pinned on them. They're academes as diverse as Doug Feith and Charles Krauthammer, Colin Powell and Bill Kristol, Richard Perle and Judy "I was proved fucking right" Miller and Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon. They all live up in an ivory tower where accountability is verboten, and with each mistake they climb a flight of stairs. They are cheered on by warbloggers and neoconservatives who so desperately want the blood off their hands, who are more afraid of their place in history than what their catastrophic mistake has done to the nation and the world.
BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide bomber struck the funeral of two anti-al-Qaida Sunni tribesmen in a town north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 50 people and wounding dozens, police said.
The blast was the latest this week to break a period of relative calm in Sunni areas, raising concerns that Sunni insurgents are reorganizing at a time when U.S. and Iraqi troops are battling Shiite militiamen elsewhere.
There is nothing more dismissive, ugly and cruel than for the men and women who signed the death warrants of so many people for an exercise in futility to cast that historic mistake as something unworthy of discussion, as some sort of borrrr-ing lecture series instead of the fundamental question that will haunt the rest of their lives. "Academic argument" is actually the comment of the 2008 campaign. It encapsulates everything about conservatism.
Unfortunately, we have to find a media that isn't similarly culpable and desirous of ignoring Iraq for their own reasons, that is willing to report it.
The Village, via Cokie Roberts, gives their very serious assessment of Iraq on ABC's This Week:
STEPHANOPOLOUS: But this is going to be a split in the party. You all (at The Nation) are backing a plan that a lot of Congressional challengers are backing (The Responsible Plan) saying, immediate withdrawal, unconditional...
VANDEN HEUVEL: that's right...
(crosstalk)
VANDEN HEUVEL: There are 42 Congressional challengers...
ROBERTS: But no major Presidential candidates are saying that, because they're sitting there saying look, we've been there, we've seen it, we think it's an irresponsible thing to do.
VANDEN HEUVEL: It is not, but you know what, the responsible thing to do is withdraw.
(you hear Cokie odiously chuckling at this point)
VANDEN HEUVEL: If we withdraw responsibly, the region would be more stable in the long term, America will be restored as a responsible global leader, and there are 42 challengers, you are absolutely right Cokie, who have a responsible plan to withdraw.
ROBERTS: Convincing the electorate of that I think would be very difficult, and I also agree that the notion that Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham you heard this morning putting forward, that Americans would prefer to win, is--
VANDEN HEUVEL: But what is winning? This war is unwinnable, there are no military solutions. And Cokie, Americans are already behind this, 2/3 of Americans believe this war was a mistake to fight. And when Dick Cheney said to ABC's Martha Raddatz last week, "I don't care what Americans think." The contempt, the disdain for Americans and for what this war has done to the military, to our economy, and to our future as a nation. If you care about responsible...
Well, Katrina Vanden Heuvel handled that a bit better than I would have, because I don't think I would have been able to hold down the bile after hearing Duchess Cokie of Versailles blather on about what Americans would prefer. Not that she's likely to have talked to anyone who's had to serve in this war or felt the burdens of this war, of course, but she just feels it in her very sensible and responsible gut.
She doesn't have a clue what the hell she's talking about, and if she's being informed about Iraq by "Sunni, Shi'a, po-tay-to po-tah-to" McCain and his man-servant Huckleberry Graham it'd be a wonder if she could pick the country out on a map. We've got an important week coming up with A Man Called Petraeus and Ryan Crocker testifying before Congress, and if this is the sober analysis we can expect out of that, we're all doomed. Because in point of fact, Iraq is at a major crossroads right now. The Basra offensive was a complete failure and large swaths of the Iraqi Army essentially refused to fight. Now Maliki is basically forming his own militia from the pro-Iranian Badr Brigade, and the intra-Shiite warfare is continuing, with US troops dying inside the Green Zone and at forward operating bases in Baghdad. The political situation is stalemated, tensions are rising between practically all groups, and whatever gains have been made by the surge have vanished. We're going to hear a lot of crap in the next week out of the Administration and their spinners, and robots like Cokie are going to lap it up because "Americans would prefer to win." That's just an ignorant and dismissive remark, and it sadly represents the depth of understanding of the tragedy in Iraq. Of course, Cokie's just repeating what "real Americans" think; that it happens to line up with establishment opinion and helps provide cover for their epic mistake of going along with the initial invasion is just a nice perk.
In the environment of Iraq, leaving 80,000 troops to babysit the Iraqis will do about as much as having 160,000 troops do the same; in other words, nothing at all (Russ Feingold understands this). Until the fundamental question - whether a continued presence in Iraq is making us safer - is answered, we're doing nothing but spinning our wheels. Keeping troops in the region to try and put a lid on violence until George Bush is safely tucked away creates a huge moral hazard where the Iraqis have no responsibility for their actions.
Here, the overriding risk is all-out civil war – whether inter-or-intra ethnic group – or regional war, or both. Our presence mitigates these risks – at least in the short term. Thus, Maliki can take risky actions like raiding Basra or openly turning the army into a wing of Badr, knowing that he and his allies won’t be exposed to the full risk of those actions (civil war) because of the American presence. Similarly, other countries (like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) feel less urgency to engage diplomatically (which is itself a “risky” omission) because of the American presence.
If, however, America announced that it would leave Iraq in a year, then the parties involved (both inside and outside Iraq) would suddenly bear more of the consequences of their risky behavior. Accordingly, they would be more motivated to bear down and bang out political deals [...]
This explains why the Kagans’ “Iraq 4-Ever” strategy is actually worse than withdrawal. The Bush/Kagan strategy is simply to keep the maximum number of troops in Iraq as long as possible in the hopes a pony will appear. To maintain political support for the Pony Strategy, they need to peddle worse-case scenarios and paint pictures of genocide and all-out civil war.
I’ll fully concede that such events are possible – anyone who doesn’t is being dishonest. But my point is that our occupation makes them more likely, for the reasons explained above. Specifically, the longer and more indefinitely we stay, the greater the moral hazard we produce. As long as we stay indefinitely, parties will act more recklessly than they otherwise would. These actions, in turn, will have profound, unpredictable, and irreversible consequences.
The plan that Vanden Heuvel was referencing, the Responsible Plan, reflects a significant wing of the Democratic Party that simply is not willing to wait around anymore while the leadership tries to come up with a coherent endgame strategy. Darcy Burner, who was the driving force behind the plan, has actually improved her electoral position as a result. I don't know how that fits in with Duchess Cokie's pronouncements, other than the obvious fact that it doesn't. Well over 50 Congressional challengers have endorsed the plan, understanding that a comprehensive strategy to end the war and repair the broken institutions that enabled this disaster not only makes political sense but is absolutely vital to our national security. Ilan Goldenberg sums up the plan nicely.
For the past two years, Democrats have been offering plan after plan to end the war in Iraq. But this one is different. As opposed to the usual broad language, combined with a laundry list of policy proposals that make up traditional party platforms, the plan has a sharp focus, with a clear strategic logic focused around two fundamental principles. First, the United States must find a way to sensibly end its military mission in Iraq--and use the political, diplomatic, humanitarian, and economic tools at its disposal to mitigate the negative consequences of the war. Second, the Iraq War has done irreparable damage not just to Iraq but to our country, and the time has come to reform our institutions and put the checks and balances in place to ensure that these mistakes are not repeated [...]
Beyond just being good policy, though, the plan exhibits a unique understanding of the legislative branch's role in foreign policy. Too often, candidates running for Congress make very specific proposals about foreign policy that are far outside of their purview. The "Real Security" plan of 2006 was ultimately about the executive branch; it was backed by a 120-page smattering of documents and reports that criticized the Bush Administration and catalogued hundreds of pieces of legislation that would reshape American foreign policy, but were, on the whole, too unwieldy to act as an agenda vehicle.
"A Responsible Plan" would instead serve as the congressional corollary to a Democratic presidency. It doesn't include elements over which Congress has little control, but it does push for 15 pieces of existing legislation, which focus on issues such as improving healthcare for a new generation of veterans and phasing out our reliance on military contractors such as Blackwater. Only the president can end the war in Iraq, but Congress can do its share by focusing on institutional repair and funding the right programs.
This approach is apparent in the most creative part of the document, titled "Preventing Future Iraqs." These policies focus on checking presidential authority and ensuring that Congress can't easily give the president a free hand to go to war. It calls for incorporating war funding into the regular defense budget instead of using "emergency supplementals"; eliminating the president's use of signing statements to alter the substantive meaning of a law passed by Congress; repealing parts of the Military Commissions Act that suspended habeas corpus; and ending the use of wiretapping without a FISA warrant. These are good policies for both Republican and Democratic presidents to abide by.
Without a robust Congressional counterbalance to executive power, we will not be able to stop more Iraqs. Darcy Burner and the dozens of endorsers are not only running to enter Congress but to restore the institution itself.
This Wednesday I'm helping host a low-dollar fundraising event for Darcy, where she will be flanked by two California candidates who have endorsed the plan, Ron Shepston (CA-42) and Mary Pallant (CA-24). If you want to reward and recognize true leadership and courage, join me in Los Angeles on Wednesday night. All the information is at this ActBlue page, and you can donate at the link as well.
I am a film and video editor, stand-up comedian, and blogger. My editor resume is here. A sample of my stand-up is here. The blog is what you're reading right now. Wasn't that easy?
View blog reactions
