Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

A good NSA would have all sorts of advice and strategy suggestions that would fall on deaf ears in this administration. As a result, that same hypothetical NSA would resign rather than continue under those circumstances.

The reason for this is that the administration really has no interest in national security. Their priorities are 1) personal security, 2) neo-con security, 3) Republican party security, 4) big-money/investor class security, then 5) national security.

When national security requirements happen to coincide with something higher up on the priority list, then you get something done for national security. Otherwise, it just gets lip service.

Sorry, I've gotten a better offer. I'm going to go touring with Nathan (Williams, not Newman) and the Zydeco Cha Chas.

And because of this we are losing the War on Terror.

"Realities that, as best as I can see, the current administration pretends not to see."

You think they are pretending?

Max's only analytic problem being that there are NO "non-terrorist anti-American forces" fighting. There are only jihadists like al Zarqawi, and former Saddamists who know there is no future for them in a democratic Iraq.

The fastest way to get American forces out of Iraq is for all Iraqis to accept the democracy being installed. Then everyone can try to get elected and have their way.

Did they disappear Condi? I haven't heard a peep out of her in ages.

Independent reporters and observers (Juan Cole, among many others, including the entire British and European press corps available in English) for eight to ten months now have ALL said the same thing, i.e. that the contention (similar to Patrick R. Sullivan’s, here) that the opposition is predominantly “Saddamists”, “dead-enders”, and lots of foreign “jihadists”, is nonsense. Max Sawicky’s argument here, that we are creating an untenable situation by fighting it, has been the standing fear among our military strategists and foreign policy people for the same length of time, and many have been saying it out loud since LAST SUMMER.

What to do about it would be anybody’s guess. Excepting: vote George Bush OUT, so he doesn’t get us into another mess like this again. Lord knows, our press can’t be trusted...

Hoping the Iraqis will accept that “the fastest way to get American forces out of Iraq is for all Iraqis to accept the democracy being installed” was, of course, Plan A--and it is hard to predict if the Iraqis will yet forgive the sheer condescension and ignorance of this idea, and allow Bush’s business supporters to take their profits--but hey, it worked in the last election here!

Indeed, conservatives now appear to be blaming the failure of American policy on the Iraqis, because they don’t understand what’s good for them. So the boneheads of Washington are blameless, while our soldiers are still in the meatgrinder.

Missing for all this time has been any real analysis of the likely results to an immediate U.S. withdrawal, just lots of surmises. Polls of Iraqis themselves are inconclusive. A slight majority of Iraqis say they want the coalition forces to leave at once, and will feel safer if they do. On the other hand, a near majority want the coalition to stay until the permanent government is elected, and THEN out at once. It could also be inferred from the polls that once the U.S. leaves, Iraqis will join up for their own police and army in much higher numbers.

Toughing it out until we can create a “democratically-minded” strongman, while snookering the U.N. to make it look legit, so we can then withdraw, appears to be Bush’s fallback plan. Allawi looks set to fit the bill. That way we can get it off the front pages, claim the cause of democracy, and save the Republican Party from immolation, and their supporters from lost investments. No doubt Bush believes that this, too, will be the will of God, if that’s what happens...

I tend to think that the WaPo story has taken the natural revulsion of most Iraqis to this new wave of violence, and then jumped to conclusions, i.e. that they will now support the U.S. in stabilizing the situation: “...it could be an important moment in the U.S. struggle to win acceptance for the military occupation...” For our journalism fellows: what kind of phrase is that, in the middle of a supposed news story? Consider: “It could be an important moment for me to go take a shit.”

I thought that the US intended to stay, even after the first of july, in those fancy bases they are building. So that they can be sure to have control of the oil.

That’s a good point. It appears that the U.S. intends to withdraw only to permanent bases on Iraqi soil. While the majority of the American public doesn’t suspect this yet, it may be saleable to them as an insurance policy.

It does NOT appear that the vast majority of Iraqis, fierce and proud, will easily go along with this, however. And they already believe the interim government is an American puppet. If the U.S. doesn’t handle it carefully (oops! “U.S. Edicts Curb Power of Iraq’s Leadrship”, Washington Post, today), the American presence will continue to impact recruitment to the Iraqi police and army, because those recruits can expect to be regarded as traitorous quislings by their fellows.

So far, Iraqi public opinion on some of these issues has been well managed, much as it has been in this country. The next step would be to make sure that the “independent election commission” has no taint of the Coalition Forces or the superceded Coalition Provisional Authority with its Governing Council. But since the Kurds are bolting, the Shia are underrepresented, and the interim government appears to be all CPA (Allawi himself was on the GC), this show of revolving characters may have started to become transparent.

The Bushies may have erred, not only in supposing that market economics could be force-fed to a country used to socialist Baathism (84% of Iraqis want price controls), but in supposing that its American-style bait-&-switch politics could work there too.

Patrick R Sullivan:

You said, "Max's only analytic problem being that there are NO "non-terrorist anti-American forces" fighting. There are only jihadists like al Zarqawi, and former Saddamists who know there is no future for them in a democratic Iraq.

The fastest way to get American forces out of Iraq is for all Iraqis to accept the democracy being installed. Then everyone can try to get elected and have their way. "

Please cite your VERIFIED sources for this information please, verified meaning crosschecked with at least one source that is independent of the originating source, preferably two independent sources from each other as well as the originating source. Can you do this? You fail to provide any evidence whatsoever to back up this assertion of yours as to the composition of the makeup of the insurgency in Iraq. Do you have ANY sources other than those within this Administration and those that have been allied with this Administration that back this assertion of yours up?

Scotian: You might be interested in "Beyond Fallujah" by Patrick Graham in the June '04 Harpers.

If Graham's piece has even a shred of validity, then Sully's assumption has no basis in fact. I say assumption in place of assertion, because most wingnuts build an "argument" by stringing together a bunch of assumptions and then challenging the listener by asking: "There you go, how can you disagree with that?"

I know everyone's already taken a swipe at Patrick R. Sullivan, but one more point begs to be made:

"The fastest way to get American forces out of Iraq is for all Iraqis to accept the democracy being installed. Then everyone can try to get elected and have their way."

***That's not something we can make happen.***

(Sorry for the shouting.)

Sully is kinda like a guy who says, "I'd be a lot happier at work if my boss would give me the corner office, a big raise, and no deadlines."

As long as your 'plans' are contingent on someone ELSE's actions that are beyond your control, your 'plans' are hopes, rather than plans.

Speaking as an American, our choices are confined to what America, as an actor, can bring about. Since we've at least theoretically been trying to get the Iraqis to 'accept the democracy being installed' for the past fourteen months, and we're clearly much farther from that goal than when we started, it must be accepted as a given that we can't cause that acceptance to happen.

So what Sully is saying is that WE have no choices; THEY have the choices, and they control what we do. Excuse me if I say that's NOT my idea of a foreign policy.

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