Category Archives: Bush Administration

OPINION: Deceptive or delusional?

Bush’s appalling Iraq speech
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 13, 2007

President Bush’s TV address tonight was the worst speech he’s ever given on the war in Iraq, and that’s saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional.

The biggest fiction was that because of the “success” of the surge, we can reduce U.S. troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15 by next July. Gen. David Petraeus has recommended this step, and President George W. Bush will order it so. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — President Bush’s basic problem as he addressed the nation last night was that his position has become untenable: he is a president who needs a front man. If General Patraeus could have given a presidential address, Bush seemed like he would happily have handed over the Oval Office.

“The war of good and evil” — phrasing that Bush would in the past have eagerly claimed as his own — this time came instead from an email from the parents of a dead soldier, Army Specialist Brandon Stout of Michigan. Then, in the ultimate act of disownership, Bush said, “now it falls to us to finish the work they have begun.”

Sorry, Mr. President, it wasn’t Americans like Brandon Stout who started this war — they simply blindly followed your lead.

Three and a half years later, faced with the consequences of their casual assent to war, many — perhaps even most Americans — would now support the idea that the president and this administration’s top officials “have to be held accountable.”

That demand also comes from elsewhere — this time from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Today he went on to say, “I have a firm belief that one day this current US president and the American officials will be tried in a fair international court for the atrocities committed in Iraq.”

Washington’s reaction would no doubt be, of course that’s what America’s nemesis would say. Yet as all the neocons and now the president himself each energetically pursue their own personal exit strategy for getting out of responsibility for Iraq, the judgment day they clearly fear is much closer than the hereafter. It comes in the ignominious fall that the mighty will always struggle to evade. Eventually, though, executives lose their privilege.

ANALYSIS: Why the Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda

Sunni world
By Marc Lynch, The American Prospect, September 13, 2007

During his visit to Iraq last week, President Bush carved out an hour to sit down with Shaykh Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha, the controversial head of the Anbar Salvation Council who had become a symbol of America’s Anbar strategy. The pictures from that photo-op were likely the Shaykh’s death warrant: Abu Risha was assassinated today, even as Bush prepared to use the Anbar strategy’s “success” to justify our continued involvement in Iraq.

David Petraeus was quick to blame al-Qaeda for the stunning murder, a leap to judgment emblematic of all which is wrong with America’s current views of the Sunnis of Iraq. In reality there are a plethora of likely suspects, reflecting the reality of an intensely factionalized and divided community which little resembles the picture offered by the administration’s defenders. Leaders of other tribes deeply resented Abu Risha’s prominence. Leaders of the major insurgency factions had for weeks been warning against allowing people such as Abu Risha to illegitimately reap the fruits of their jihad against the occupation. The brazen murder of America’s closest Sunni ally in Iraq was as predictable as it was shocking, and carries a powerful message to both Iraqis and Americans about the real prospects for the long-term success of the American project. [complete article]

See also, Abu Risha’s place in history (Badger) and Iraqi insurgents kill key U.S. ally (BBC News).

EDITORIAL: As Israel bombs Syria, the United States prepares to attack Iran

As Israel bombs Syria, the United States prepares to attack Iran
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 12, 2007

With contradictory statements coming from unnamed Bush administration officials, there continues to be speculation around the purpose and significance of Israel’s incursion into Syrian airspace last week. The New York Times reports that:

One Bush administration official said Israel had recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking pictures of possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been supplied with material from North Korea. The administration official said Israeli officials believed that North Korea might be unloading some of its nuclear material on Syria.

While Associated Press says that:

Israeli warplanes targeted weapons destined for Hezbollah in a strike last week in northeastern Syria, a U.S. government official said Wednesday, even as Syria and Israel remained silent on the incident. […] U.S. officials have declined to comment on whether the suspected weapons targeted might have originated in North Korea, whether the aircraft passed over Turkey on their way into or out of Syria or whether Israel had used weapons from the United States in the airstrike.

Given that North Korea has just opened up its nuclear facilities to American inspectors and it recently entered into a bilateral agreement with the U.S. saying it will disable its nuclear facilities by the end of this year, the North Korean angle to the Syrian story looks to me like a smokescreen.

In World Politics Review, Frida Ghitis points out that:

Israel is undoubtedly developing contingency plans in case it decides it must stop Iran’s nuclear program. If it decides to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations, a possible flight route could take it over the Syria-Turkey border, along Northern Iraq’s friendly Kurdish region, and into Iran. Flying safely over Syria would be key to the success of the mission against Iran.

It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that Israel will not need to follow through with such plans. Fox News reports that:

Political and military officers, as well as weapons of mass destruction specialists at the State Department, are now advising Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the diplomatic approach [to Iran] favored by [Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas] Burns has failed and the administration must actively prepare for military intervention of some kind. Among those advising Rice along these lines are John Rood, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation; and a number of Mideast experts, including Ambassador James Jeffrey, deputy White House national security adviser under Stephen Hadley and formerly the principal deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs.

Consequently, according to a well-placed Bush administration source, “everyone in town” is now participating in a broad discussion about the costs and benefits of military action against Iran, with the likely timeframe for any such course of action being over the next eight to 10 months, after the presidential primaries have probably been decided, but well before the November 2008 elections.

The discussions are now focused on two basic options: less invasive scenarios under which the U.S. might blockade Iranian imports of gasoline or exports of oil, actions generally thought to exact too high a cost on the Iranian people but not enough on the regime in Tehran; and full-scale aerial bombardment.

On the latter course, active consideration is being given as to how long it would take to degrade Iranian air defenses before American air superiority could be established and U.S. fighter jets could then begin a systematic attack on Iran’s known nuclear targets.

Most relevant parties have concluded such a comprehensive attack plan would require at least a week of sustained bombing runs, and would at best set the Iranian nuclear program back a number of years — but not destroy it forever. Other considerations include the likelihood of Iranian reprisals against Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centers; and the effects on American troops in Iraq. There, officials have concluded that the Iranians are unlikely to do much more damage than they already have been able to inflict through their supply of explosives and training of insurgents in Iraq.

That is a mind-boggling assertion. Do these officials regard IEDs to be as powerful as Iranian missiles or that the latter are no more dangerous than an IED? The Iranians themselves have been quite blunt in their warnings:

[Former head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard,] General Rahim Yahya Safavi, Jaafari’s predecessor and now special military advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had warned last week that the United States did not appreciate how at risk its troops were.

“It can not evaluate the vulnerability of its 200,000 troops in the region since we have accurately identified all of their camps,” said Safavi.

It’s hard not to believe that at the beginning of a war with Iran, the United States might lose more troops than it has over the course of four and a half years in Iraq.

But if anyone thinks that General Petraeus seems like far too prudent a commander to allow his forces to become so vulnerable, his comments in an interview given to The Independent on Monday offer no reassurance:

General Petraeus strongly implied that it would soon be necessary to obtain authorisation to take action against Iran within its own borders, rather than just inside Iraq. “There is a pretty hard look ongoing at that particular situation” he said.

OPINION: The next war in Iraq

The next war in Iraq
By Joe Klein, Time, August 23, 2007

Prime Minister Maliki greeted by President AhmadinejadIt has been clear for months that Nouri al-Maliki’s National Unity government is, as a senior U.S. official said, “none of the above.” Senator Carl Levin called for it to be replaced after his and Senator John Warner’s mid-August Iraq jaunt. And Ambassador Ryan Crocker told me, “The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing.” But replace it with what? The consensus in the U.S. intelligence community is that there’s going to be lots of bloodshed, including fighting among the Shi’ites, before a credible Iraqi government emerges. It also seems that the U.S. attempt to build an Iraqi army and police force has been a failure. Some units are pretty good, but most are unreliable, laced with members of various Shi’ite militias. This was clear from my conversations with U.S. combat officers on the ground in Baqubah, Baghdad and Yusufia. It became clearer when seven enlisted men serving in Baghdad wrote a very courageous Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on Aug. 19 in which they said, “Reports that a majority of Iraqi army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — As the anti-Maliki chorus grows, it’s worth remembering what happened just a year ago when a foreign official — Mark Malloch Brown, then U.N. deputy secretary general — had the audacity to make a few remarks critical of the U.S. government.

John Bolton — then U.S. ambassador to the U.N. — called the matter “very, very grave” and sternly told Kofi Annan that “this is the worst mistake by a senior UN official that I have seen” since 1989.

But I guess when the boot’s on the other foot and American officials are bashing in the head of the leader of another government, it’s different. After all, if an Iraqi prime minister can only enter office once he’s been duly stamped, “U.S. approved,” it’s only fitting that he can later get stamped, “U.S. disapproved.” Which is to say, this must all look perfectly in accordance with the natural order of the world if you happen to be a senior U.S. official or one of their media mouthpieces.

One such mouthpiece — David Ignatius — is less than enthusiastic about Maliki’s presumptive replacement, Ayad Allawi. “Allawi has bundles of money to help buy political support, but it comes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, rather than the United States.” No good getting a new prime minister if he’s not in your debt and you can’t tell him what to do. How frustrating it is trying to rig a democracy in the middle of a civil war!

But there is one particularly interesting glimpse that Ignatius provides inside the convoluted process of administration thinking (keeping in mind that this is an administration afflicted with multiple personality disorder). It is that the “contain Iran” faction (read, Rice et al), now anticipates the possibility that U.S. policy towards Iraq will also become one of containment.

Containment? Haven’t we been there before?

FEATURE: Challenging the generals

Challenging the generals
By Fred Kaplan, New York Times, August 26, 2007

On Aug. 1, Gen. Richard Cody, the United States Army’s vice chief of staff, flew to the sprawling base at Fort Knox, Ky., to talk with the officers enrolled in the Captains Career Course. These are the Army’s elite junior officers. Of the 127 captains taking the five-week course, 119 had served one or two tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly as lieutenants. Nearly all would soon be going back as company commanders. A captain named Matt Wignall, who recently spent 16 months in Iraq with a Stryker brigade combat team, asked Cody, the Army’s second-highest-ranking general, what he thought of a recent article by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling titled “A Failure in Generalship.” The article, a scathing indictment that circulated far and wide, including in Iraq, accused the Army’s generals of lacking “professional character,” “creative intelligence” and “moral courage.”

Yingling’s article — published in the May issue of Armed Forces Journal — noted that a key role of generals is to advise policy makers and the public on the means necessary to win wars. “If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means,” he wrote, “he shares culpability for the results.” Today’s generals “failed to envision the conditions of future combat and prepare their forces accordingly,” and they failed to advise policy makers on how much force would be necessary to win and stabilize Iraq. These failures, he insisted, stemmed not just from the civilian leaders but also from a military culture that “does little to reward creativity and moral courage.” He concluded, “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — While the constraints on innovation inside the military are obviously embedded in military culture and the promotions process, there seem to be a number of other factors worth considering.

As self-contained as military culture might be, it is surely influenced by trends evident in society at large. In late 2002 and early 2003, opposition to the imminent war was marginal. Not once was the American antiwar movement able to match Louis Farrakhan’s crowd-pulling power and mobilize a million-strong gathering in Washington. While most of the nation either actively or passively supported the war, it seems unrealistic to imagine that there would be many serious expressions of dissent from inside the military.

The uniformed leadership of the U.S. military are part of the Pentagon’s political culture. They might defer to civilian policymakers but they are an integral branch of the military industrial complex. As such, they have a vested interest in promoting and sustaining those programs that serve this matrix of political, commercial and budgetary needs. Innovation is likely to be deemed good, only to the extent that those needs continue being well served. Pen-pushing generals inside the Pentagon, once retired, slide easily into the boardrooms of a defense industry that ultimately has more interest in who places purchase orders than who uses their products.

The next major test of the moral courage of the generals will probably be whether they are willing to resign en masse rather than follow orders to attack Iran. Rumor has it that a number of generals are ready to rise to the challenge, but I have no confidence that this will happen. The heroism that promises a pension cut and no medals can only appeal to a rare minority. How many people can say that they achieved great success in this world by being true to their conscience?

NEWS: No big shifts planned after report on Iraq

No big shifts planned after report on Iraq
By Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post, August 25, 2007

Despite political pressure for a change of course in Iraq, the White House hopes to keep in place its existing military strategy and troop levels there after the mid-September report from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, administration officials said.

Even as the administration faced a new call this week from Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a leading ally, to begin at least a symbolic withdrawal of troops by Christmas, White House officials said privately that they are not contemplating making major shifts before early next year. They said that next month’s report is likely to highlight what they see as significant improvements in security over the past year and that they expect the president to assert that now is not the time to dramatically change approaches. [complete article]

NEWS: Spying program may be tested by terror case

Spying program may be tested by terror case
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, August 26, 2007

The case is significant in a second way, as a vivid illustration of a new form of pre-emptive law enforcement intended to stop terrorism before it happens, even at the expense of charges of entrapment.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has an obligation to use all available investigative tools,” prosecutors wrote in a brief urging the court to impose harsh sentences in February, “including a sting operation, to remove those ready and willing to help terrorists from our streets.”

The lead prosecutor, William C. Pericak, an assistant United States attorney, said the sting had worked perfectly.

“You can’t put a percentage on how likely these guys would have been to commit an act of terrorism,” Mr. Pericak said in an interview in his office at the federal courthouse here. “But if a terrorist came to Albany, my opinion is that these guys would have assisted 100 percent.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The idea of “pre-emptive law enforcement” comes straight out of movies like “Minority Report” (representing a future in which criminals are caught before they’ve committed a crime). Anyone who finds comfort in this kind of security should kiss goodbye to democracy. This approach to national security doesn’t present the risk of leading to an authoritarian state; it exemplifies the operation of such a state.

NEWS: Dissent threatens U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal

Dissent threatens U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal
By Emily Wax and Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, August 26, 2007

After two years of painstaking negotiations, a historic nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and India appears to be unraveling as a broad spectrum of political parties calls on the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to scrap the deal, saying it limits the country’s sovereignty in energy and foreign policy matters.

The landmark accord that just weeks ago looked like a major foreign policy triumph for this energy-starved subcontinent has become a political liability for India’s fragile ruling coalition.

The brouhaha over the deal has surprised some nuclear analysts in Washington, partly because the Bush administration was widely perceived as having caved in to key Indian demands. The administration had assured the government here that it could receive uninterrupted nuclear supplies from the United States and maintain the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel — a potentially dangerous prospect because reprocessing technology can also be used to make weapons-grade plutonium. To many Western observers, India already had the upper hand in the deal, a testament to its growing international influence. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: Mysterious disappearances (and releases) in Pakistan

Mysterious disappearances (and releases) in Pakistan
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, August 23, 2007

On July 13, 2004, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a 25-year-old computer engineer, was detained by Pakistani military intelligence. The following month a Reuters report quoted a Pakistani intelligence source saying that:

“After [Khan’s] capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send emails to his contacts… He sent encoded emails and received encoded replies. He’s a great hacker and even the US agents said he was a computer whiz.”

Last weekend US officials said someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the [elevated Homeland Security “orange”] alert [which, just by chance, coincided with the Democratic National Convention] .

The New York Times obtained Khan’s name independently, and US officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning.

None of those reports mentioned that Khan had been under cover helping the authorities catch al Qaeda suspects, and that his value in that regard was destroyed by making his name public.

A day later, Britain hastily rounded up terrorism suspects, some of whom are believed to have been in contact with Khan while he was under cover.

Washington has portrayed those arrests as a major success, saying one of the suspects, named Abu Musa al-Hindi or Abu Eissa al-Hindi, was a senior al Qaeda figure.

But British police have acknowledged the raids were carried out in a rush.

For the following three years, Khan remained in detention — but was never charged. This week, his case — along with that of over 200 other missing people — came before Pakistan’s Supreme Court. It was then revealed for the first time that Khan had in fact been quietly released a month earlier (July 24, 2007). The New York Times reports that, “American officials declined to speak for the record on Monday, but said they were dismayed at the news of his release.” They may have been dismayed but that’s not quite the same as saying they weren’t already aware of what had happened.

This story is hard to unravel and so far no one in the U.S. media seems to think it’s worth the effort. But there are numerous questions that need to be answered. Did the Bush administration receive advance notice of Khan’s release? Does the administration support the efforts of Pakistan’s Supreme Court to uphold the law and secure the release of uncharged detainees? Or, is the administration currently looking for new venues of secret detention outside Pakistan in order to avoid the risk of detainees being granted their legal rights?

Given the focus that this administration has generally had in finding ways to maneuver around the law, one assumes that it is currently busy exercising its well-honed skills in the outlaw domain where it most comfortably operates.

But as for America’s attitude towards Pakistan’s invisible prisoners — what does it say about us if we have more concern about a government’s efficiency in clamping down on terrorism than we have about its use of what at other times would have been seen as the instruments of state terrorism?

Who wields the more dangerous power? The terrorist who might blow up innocent people, or the government that can make suspicious people “disappear”?

EDITORIAL: Iran isn’t scared

Iran isn’t scared
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, August 20, 2007

The latest move in the U.S.’s escalating rhetoric aimed at Iran is Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch’s claim — no evidence provided — that 50 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are training Shiite militias, south of Baghdad, the area under Lynch’s command. He hasn’t caught any of them but he knows they’re there. He also confirms that after spending two months patrolling a 125-mile stretch of the Iraq-Iran border, his troops haven’t once intercepted shipments of illegal weapons. I guess it just goes to show what a devilishly cunning enemy Iran is: it can sneak in sophisticated bombs and train militias how to use them, all without getting caught.

What the U.S. seems to be doing is providing “proof” (threadbare as usual) as to why the Revolutionary Guard needs to be labeled as an SDGT (“specially designated global terrorist”). I’m sure Joe Lieberman thinks the argument is iron-clad.

What seems much less clear is whether there is any real strategic thinking going on here. Robert Baer says he has been told by an administration official, “IRGC IED’s are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran.” It’s a simple as that. Baer writes, “The feeling in the Administration is that we should have taken care of the IRGC a long, long time ago.”

Nothing better optimizes American hubris than the expression “taking care” — as though the solution to any problem merely hinges on whether the all-powerful U.S. of A. gets around to deciding to fix it. Meanwhile the world — convinced that the United States is much better at breaking than fixing — shudders at the prospect that the Pentagon is getting ready to engage in another bout of Middle East problem-solving.

As for how Iran is reacting to the administration’s increasingly bellicose rhetoric? It seems to be eagerly lapping it up.

The Ayatollah’s are far too sophisticated to use an expression like “bring ’em on,” but in effect, that’s what they are saying. Associated Press reports that last week,

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami [not to be confused with former president Mohammad Khatami], who does not hold a government post but once a month delivers the official Friday prayer sermon, told thousands of worshippers at Tehran University in a speech broadcast on radio that the designation [SDGT] showed that the Guards were doing something right.

“I believe the U.S. decision for including the Guards in the list of terrorist organizations is an honor and a golden card in their file,” he said. “Whenever your enemy is saying something bad about an organization, it shows that the organization has been effective,” he added.

Now, in a move that seems calculated to demonstrate who really holds greater political influence in Baghdad — Tehran or Washington — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accepted an invitation to the Iraqi capital. I doubt that President Bush will be able to avail himself of a similar photo opportunity.

EDITORIAL: Who’s in the best position to play a constructive role in Iraq?

Who’s in the best position to play a constructive role in Iraq?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, August 10, 2007

In his patronizing, familiar style, President Bush yesterday said he’d need to have a “heart-to-heart” with his “friend,” Prime Minister Maliki, if the latter continues to insist that Iran is playing a constructive role in Iraq. Then, to drive his message home, Bush switched from friendly to aggressive by saying, “Now, is he [Maliki] trying to get Iran to play a more constructive role? I presume he is. But that doesn’t – what my question is – well, my message to him is, is that when we catch you playing a non-constructive role there will be a price to pay.” Bush staffers were then forced to untangle Bush’s ambiguous syntax by saying that it was Iran — not Maliki — that will pay the price. Vice President Cheney has already volunteered that that price could include airstrikes against suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force.

With a casus belli such as “catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran,” the long-feared war against Iran now seems unlikely to start with a shock-and-awe strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Instead, a series of “incidents” spread out over a period of months might escalate into a conflict from which neither side can back down. If this happens, I would argue that it reflects a Cheney-inspired political strategy for circumnavigating high level dissent inside the Pentagon.

For some time, rumors have been circulating in Washington that a significant number of generals would resign rather than support military action against Iran. Yet in the scenario I describe, it would only be after the fact (and too late for anyone to preemptively threaten resignation) before everyone agreed that the threshold of war had already been crossed. The window of opportunity for a principled rebellion is rapidly closing.

Meanwhile, the White House’s more immediate preoccupation seems to be whether it’s going to continue treating Maliki as a friend or turn him into a foe.

If and when Maliki has this promised/threatened heart-to-heart with the president, he might consider asking Bush how Iraqis should interpret the following two contrasting images.

To Iran’s west we see an American-led reconstruction process in Iraq that after four years has yielded meager results. Oil production remains below pre-war levels, electricity supply in Baghdad is under a third of what it was, unemployment is around 50%, and 70% of Iraqis lack adequate water supplies. Until quite recently, the U.S. was characterizing “terrorism” — not Iran — as the primary obstacle to Iraq’s progress.

To the east of Iran, Herat (Afghanistan’s western-most city) is now being hailed as a demonstration of “the positive influence of Iran” — those being the words of Mohammed Rafiq Shahir, president of Herat’s Council of Professionals. Since 2001, “Herat has attracted $350 million in private investment for industry – more than any other Afghan city, including Kabul, which is some 10 times larger. In total, 250 medium- and large-scale factories have been built.” The driving force behind this economic boom has been Iran. It has built a highway to the nearby border and it has hooked Herat into the Iranian power grid.

No wonder that — unlike Bush — Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, views his Persian neighbors positively. At the same time, Nuri al-Maliki might well look forward to the day that Iraq is able to purchase cheap electricity from nuclear-powered Iranian power stations.

At the end of the day, what should be more important? Having friendly relations with your immediate neighbors or pleasing a distant, unpredictable and unreliable superpower?

EDITORIAL: The future of democracy depends on abandoning the war metaphor

The future of democracy depends on abandoning the war metaphor
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, August 3, 2007

If presidential candidates can’t come up with some intelligent foreign policy positions, it’s time that they followed State Department advice: shut up — at least for a while.

In just three days we’ve heard candidates proposing sending troops into Pakistan, using nuclear weapons against al Qaeda, and threatening to bomb Mecca and Medina.

Campaign rhetoric is doing what ought to be impossible: make the Bush administration sound responsible. It is also sending a chilling message to the rest of the world: if you’re hoping that George Bush is going to be replaced by a president with a more enlightened view of the world and a more sophisticated approach to politics, don’t count on it.

In the latest instance of “precision bombing” gone wrong, women and children are among up to 300 civilians killed in air strikes in the Afghan province of Helmand. How many more times does the West have to be responsible for the indiscriminate killing of innocent people before it acknowledges that this is neither an effective nor legitimate means to counter terrorism?

The so-called “war on terrorism” has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims. Small wonder that in the Muslim world this war is regarded as a war on Islam. This perception is further reinforced by the fact that Western leaders persist in framing the struggle as one between religious extremists and secular moderates.

In a bold initiative in April, John Edwards posed a challenge to fellow Democratic candidates when he rejected the phrase “war on terror”:

“This political language has created a frame that is not accurate and that Bush and his gang have used to justify anything they want to do,” Edwards said in a phone interview from Everett, Wash. “It’s been used to justify a whole series of things that are not justifiable, ranging from the war in Iraq, to torture, to violation of the civil liberties of Americans, to illegal spying on Americans. Anyone who speaks out against these things is treated as unpatriotic. I also think it suggests that there’s a fixed enemy that we can defeat with just a military campaign. I just don’t think that’s true.”

In 2001, the neocons rapturously applauded President Bush’s “insight” (triggered by their prompting) that America was at war. What the last six years have demonstrated are the consequences of allowing “war” to become the governing metaphor in national and international affairs.

The inescapable effect of being governed by the war metaphor is that it fosters absolutist expectations. The goal of war is to crush, defeat, and eliminate the enemy.

When Bush declared that we will not discriminate between the terrorists and those who harbor them, he opened the door to a genocidal sentiment. Security analyist, Michael Vlahos notes:

I have had many “Defense World” conversations that have ended with: “the time may come when we will have to kill millions of Muslims,” or, “history shows that to win over a people you have to kill at least 10 percent of them, like the Romans” (for comparison, we killed or contributed to the death of about five percent of Japan from 1944-46, while Russia has killed at least eight percent of the Chechen people). Or consider the implications of “Freeper” talk-backs to an article of mine in The American Conservative: “History shows that wars only end with a totally defeated enemy otherwise they go on … Either Islam or us will quit in total destruction.”

Even if the majority of Americans might not believe that America is engaged in a war on Islam, Muslims have solid grounds for thinking otherwise. Images of the dead are not erased by empty rhetoric from American politicians who express their support for “moderate, peaceful Muslims.”

If the 2008 presidential elections are to going to open the possibility for a change of lasting political consequence then they should be focused on a campaign between those who support and those who reject the “war” metaphor.

George Bush declared his to be a “war presidency.” Because he faced no political challenge in doing so, America blindly submitted itself to being governed by war. The real wars in which the United States is now embroiled were not entered into in response to real acts of war. Terrorists can commit atrocities but they cannot start war; only nations can enter war. Not only the war in Iraq, but also the war on terrorism itself, were wars we embarked on by choice. We didn’t choose to be attacked on 9/11 but we did choose to turn a political challenge into a military one.

As Zbigniew Brzezinski eloquently stated in his seminal Washington Post op-ed earlier this year, “Terrorized by ‘war on terror’“:

The damage these three words have done — a classic self-inflicted wound — is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves.

The 2008 presidential race is still in its early days. There is still time for Democratic candidates to follow John Edward’s lead (something they are clearly already eager to do in other ways). But if by the time it comes to election day we have no better choice than between candidates who are competing for the role of “strongest leader in the war on terrorism”, we might as well burn our ballot papers rather than vote.

EDITORIAL: Beware of Americans bearing gifts

Beware of Americans bearing gifts
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, July 31, 2007

In suggesting how … a brand strategy might be applied to the United States, Business for Diplomatic Action’s chair, advertising guru Keith Reinhard, suggests a simple yet elegant promise: “We will help you.”

This little gem comes from, “Enlisting Madison Avenue – The marketing approach to earning popular support in theaters of operation,” a RAND Corporation report [PDF] for which the Pentagon recently paid a handsome $400,000.

My guess is that someone dropped a copy on Karl Rove’s desk and he passed it along to Frank Luntz with a simple request: Please distill these 211 pages into a message we can use. Word came back: Get Bush and Rice to use the word “help” as often as possible.

So, when Bush recently made a half-baked effort to warm up the Middle East peace process, he managed five helps in five sentences. Quite impressive!

… all responsible nations have a duty to help clarify the way forward. By supporting the reforms of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, we can help them show the world what a Palestinian state would look like — and act like. We can help them prove to the world, the region, and Israel that a Palestinian state would be a partner — not a danger. We can help them make clear to all Palestinians that rejecting violence is the surest path to security and a better life. And we can help them demonstrate to the extremists once and for all that terror will have no place in a Palestinian state.

Now, in the same spirit, Condi is touring the region and she’s intent on showing what a reliable helper the U.S. wants to be by handing out weapons like Christmas gifts.

What the administration is demonstrating — for the umpteenth time — is that the abuse of language has an effect: In short order your words come to mean nothing.

The only unambiguous message that this administration has managed to convey is that its word carries no weight. “Help,” “democracy,” “peace,” “progress,” — these have as much substance as bubbles floating in a breeze. They glisten, then vanish.