The politics of losing a war

American poster from the Second World War; that's not one of those in which we are currently engaged, though some people seem to think so

It's impossible to say for sure whether Cheney and Bush really believe that all the militias in Iraq are going to lay down their arms and surrender to the US to be imprisoned and tortured as "illegal combatants" for years on end. Presumably a unilateral surrender along those lines would be something like their idea of "victory".

But most everyone else in the world, outside the hardcore Republicans who still support the war, everyone can see that a "victory" like that isn't going to happen. Cheney and Bush may even be creating a situation that it won't be remotely possible for a future President to present our eventual departure from Iraq as any kind of victory.

In the so-called "war on terror", to the extent that it's a "war" in any sense other than a slogan to justify allowing the President and Vice President to disregard any laws they choose, there's good reason to think we're losing that one, too.

In Bush steps up sales push to sustain his surge in Iraq by William Douglas and Margaret Talev, McClatchy Newspapers 08/22/07, reports that Bush is putting on a publicity offensive to sell The Surge, which for the moment has come to stand for the entire Iraq War policy, or at least Cheney and Bush would like it to.

Douglas and Talev also report that a group called Freedom Watch is planning to run a month-long, $15 million media buy for advertisement "in more than 20 states" to push Congress to support the Cheney-Bush Iraq policies. Two former senior White House staffers, Ari Fleisher and the organization's president, Bradley Blakeman, are member of the group. They deny that "the group's a front for the White House". And surely Ari Fleisher would never support any outfit that might bring his own credibility into question, would he?

According to Douglas and Talev's analysis, there are indications that Bush's new Sell The Surge campaign is firming up Republican support in Congress in support of the Cheney-Bush policies. For anyone who's followed how useless virtually all the Republican "war critics" in Congress have been, you have to wonder how they could tell if support had firmed up among that group. There was hardly any dissent in the first place.

There certainly hasn't been any new burst of frankness and realism from Cheney and Bush. Douglas and Talev:

Bush voiced confidence that the surge is working, even while admitting frustration about the lack of progress toward political reconciliation in Iraq. That was supposed to be the key measure of the surge’s success, the administration had said early this year when it launched the plan. The surge was supposed to ease security stress enough for Iraq's rival factions to begin cooperating. That hasn't happened. ...

Reports of tactical military progress haven’t changed Democrats' plans to hold more House and Senate votes on deadlines for U.S. troop withdrawal when they return in September. But those reports have dampened Democrats' prospects of getting more Republicans to join them. That means that Bush, wielding veto power if he must, is likely to prevail on Iraq policy, for Democrats lack the two-thirds majorities they need to overcome his veto. (my emphasis)

Obviously, we need to watch the Dems closely on this one. But there doesn't seem to be any obvious shift from opposing to supporting the war among Congressional Dems. But Congressman Brian Baird of Washington state has, for whatever reason, gone in Joe Lieberman mode, switching his position and making it a particular point to attack his own party in words that echo Republican whining:

Prior to Congress' August recess, Baird had supported legislation that called for withdrawal of U.S. forces to begin within 120 days. He now says that he wishes the measure had never come up and that he hasn't so much reversed his position as "adjusted" his thinking.

"We need to keep our force strength where it is until next spring and give the political rhetoric a rest," he said. "If the Democrats were less interested in finding fault and blaming people for a colossal mistake and if Republicans would stop being super-patriots, it would give a chance for our troops on the ground to operate."

The Big Pundits will find this to be a gratifying example of the kind of "moderation" called for in the cult of High Broderism.

But the Dems need to exercise some party discipline over this. It's one thing to break with the party on an issue, even a vital one like this. It's another to make a point to attack the Democrats over it. If he wants to be a Trojan Horse for the Republicans to earn the applause of the disciples of High Broderism or for whatever reason, the Dems should treat him as a Trojan Horse.

Since the administration is going all-out now to set the stab-in-the-back excuse on the Iraq War as a fixture of the public discussion, we need to pay attention to how dishonest it is. For example, Trojan Horse Baird says that war critics should shut the hell up until 2008 sometime, and that "would give a chance for our troops on the ground to operate." Is there any evidence at all that the war debate has prevented American troops from operating exactly the way their generals and Commander-in-Chief wanted them to? Bush and his generals say constantly that the military is getting exactly what they need to fight the war. So hopefully some reporter will has ask Baird just what the [Cheney] he's talking about.

And what about all those Republicans who were just recently wringing their hands in their deep concern over the situation in Iraq?

"While political reconciliation at the national level has come too slowly, grassroots reconciliation in provinces like Anbar and other Iraqi towns is encouraging," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Earlier this year he'd suggested that Republicans might start backing off of their support for the war by September if the surge wasn't working. Now he sees it differently.

“Everyone agrees that more progress on political reconciliation is essential, but pushing for a precipitous withdrawal when the momentum is ours is not just irrational, it is negligent,” said Boehner, sharpening the pro-surge GOP attack line. (my emphasis)

See, what a surprise!

Meanwhile, Alexandra Marks in the Christian Science Monitor reports on A new push for change in the war on terror 08/22/07. Short version:

In this year's Terrorism Index, a survey released Monday by Foreign Policy magazine, 84 percent of these experts believe the nation is losing the war on terror, while more than 90 percent say the world is growing more dangerous for Americans.

Trying to organize a "war" of any kind, ideological, political or military, against "terrorism" is pointless. As Zbigniew Brzezinski put it in a speech back in October of 2003 (A Must-Read Speech American Prospect Online 10/31/03):

I think that calls for serious debate in America about the role of America in the world, and I do not believe that that serious debate is satisfied simply by a very abstract, vague and quasi-theological definition of the war on terrorism as the central preoccupation of the United States in today's world. That definition of the challenge in my view simply narrows down and over-simplifies a complex and varied set of challenges that needs to be addressed on a broad front.

It deals with abstractions. It theologizes the challenge. It doesn't point directly at the problem. It talks about a broad phenomenon, terrorism, as the enemy overlooking the fact that terrorism is a technique for killing people. That doesn't tell us who the enemy is. It's as if we said that World War II was not against the Nazis but against blitzkrieg. We need to ask who is the enemy, and the enemies are terrorists.

But not in an abstract, theologically-defined fashion, people, to quote again our highest spokesmen, "people who hate things, whereas we love things" - literally. Not to mention the fact that of course terrorists hate freedom. I think they do hate. But believe me, I don't think they sit there abstractly hating freedom. They hate some of us. They hate some countries. They hate some particular targets. But it's a lot more concrete than these vague quasi-theological formulations. (my emphasis)

Marks' report is specifically on a survey of terrorism experts by Foreign Policy magazine and the (Democratic-leaning) Center for American Progress just published in that magazine; the survey is called the "Terrorism Index". She quotes Bruce Hoffman:

"This poll presents an enormously bleak and melancholy picture ... and it's difficult not to read it as a complete repudiation of the entire current conduct on the war on terrorism," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "Where we have been particularly remiss or ineffectual is in fighting the al Qaeda brand as hard as we've fought the al Qaeda terrorists."

What concerns me about some of the discussion as reported in that article, though, is that many of our terrorism "experts" seem to be trying to shoehorn the fight against jihadist terrorism into a Cold War framework. That doesn't sound terribly promising to me, either.

What sounds more sensible to me is to look closely at what countries have done who faced chronic terrorism threats, like Spain with ETA, the Basque separatist group. The Spanish newspapers report some development related to ETA practically every day. (For example, Libertad para el jefe de Batasuna detenido por el 'Zutabe' de ETA El País 23.08.07; Rubalcaba advierte de que 'el silencio de Batasuna es el peor de los augurios' El Mundo 23.08.07) It's an issue the political parties take very seriously. They have successes, they have failures, and there is even a certain amount of demagoguery over it.

But the whole country doesn't stay in a state of craziness over it. They haven't tried to declare the King or the Prime Minister above the law, or assumed the right to arrest, detain and torture "enemy combatants" or their own citizens indefinitely.

Marks also reports that many of the experts suggest, "The solution lies in changing US policy in the region and supporting Islamic scholars who can show how al Qaeda is distorting the Koran." Well, that sounds good and even makes sense. Except that, you know, the Iraq War has made the US so intensely unpopular among most Muslims that an overt association with official American ideological efforts would be the kiss of death for Muslim theologians who cooperated. Unfortunately, pretty literally a kiss of death in some cases.

The article referred in in the Sept/Oct issue of Foreign Policy, which is published by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, The Terrorism Index. It makes for some interesting reading in itself. For example:

It may be the most common - and, for many, the most convincing - argument against a quick exit from Iraq: Pulling American forces out would only move the war’s front line from the streets of Baghdad to the streets of Anytown, U.S.A. Or, as President George W. Bush often says, "The enemy would follow us home."
Or would it? It’s a scenario that the index’s experts say is unlikely. Only 12 percent believe that terrorist attacks would occur in the United States as a direct result of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Eighty-eight percent of the experts said that either such a scenario was unlikely or that they see no connection between a troop withdrawal from Iraq and terrorist attacks inside the United States. This line of thinking was consistent across party lines, with 58 percent of conservatives saying they did not believe terrorist attacks would occur at home as a result of a military drawdown in Iraq. (my emphasis in italics)

Tags: ari fleisher, brian baird, bruce hoffman, global war on terror, gwot, iraq war, war on terror

Is the real existing Al Qa'ida a major threat?

Terrorist expert Bruce Hoffman says yes, in "The global terrorist threat: is Al-Qaeda on the run or on the march?" Middle East Policy Summer 2007 (print edition).

It's worth asking with the welter of claims we hear about "Al Qa'ida" to look closely at what a particular author means when he or she talks about it. Sidney Blumenthal (Cooking the intelligence, again Salon 07/19/07) notes of the recently-released National Intelligence Estimate summary:

The latest NIE, however, is a strange product. According to highly reliable sources in the intelligence community, no new intelligence at all is reflected in the NIE. Its conclusions, on one level, are a rehash of obvious facts that anyone who reads a daily newspaper could glean, such as the protected status of al-Qaida in frontier regions of Pakistan. Other conclusions lack contextual analysis, partly because of the continuing pressure from the administration to politicize information and cherry-pick intelligence. The NIE, for example, does not explain that al-Qaida in Iraq, while lethal, is a very small part of the Sunni insurgency, and that a number of Sunni insurgent groups are its sworn enemies. Nor did the NIE note how few foreign fighters are in Iraq and what a small percentage of insurgents they constitute. (A Los Angeles Times story published on July 15 reported that of the 19,000 Iraqi prisoners held by the U.S. military there, only 135 are foreign fighters, and nearly half are Saudis.) The NIE is utterly devoid of political analysis. (my emphasis)

At the risk of sounding like Joe Lieberman whining about the evils of partisanship, I do wish that partisan ideology hadn't drenched every aspect of public discussions of terrorism. But that's the world in which we live.

Hoffman does think Al Qa'ida is a significant threat still and that the core organization has rebuilt its capabilities since the Afghanistan War began in 2001. He summarizes his main conclusions:

Defeating al-Qaeda suggests first and foremost that our assessments and analyses must be anchored firmly to sound empirical judgment and not blinded by conjecture, mirror-imaging, politically partisan prisms and wishful thinking. Second is the need to refocus our attention and efforts back to South Asia - to Pakistan and Afghanistan, specifically - where it was following 9/11 and when al-Qaeda was indeed on the run. Third is the recognition that al-Qaeda cannot be defeated with military means alone. As one U.S. intelligence officer with vast experience in this realm told me over two years ago: "We just don't have enough bullets to kill them all." (my emphasis)

I must admit I did a double-take, though, when I saw this sentence: "Although America, of course, encountered many frustrations during the Vietnam conflict, a lack of understanding of our adversary was not among them." That's not exactly the picture I have of that war.

But fighting terrorism is not the Vietnam War. And Hoffman argues plausibly that the enormous focus of time, money, attention and personnel on Iraq has had the tremendous opportunity cost (as the accountants say) of leaving US intelligence, military and law enforcement with less knowledge of Al Qa'ida than would otherwise have been expected:

In retrospect, it thus appears that Iraq has further blinded us to the possibility of an al-Qaeda renaissance. America and Britain's entanglement in that country the past four years and our overwhelming preoccupation first with an escalating insurgency and now with an incipient civil war consumed the attention and resources of our respective countries' military and intelligence communities - at precisely the time that Bin Laden, al Zawahiri and other senior al-Qaeda commanders were in their most desperate straits and stood to benefit most from this distraction. Iraq has thus had a pernicious effect on both our counterterrorism policies and perceptions of national security. As the situation in that country deteriorated, one could take solace in the president's argument that we were "fighting terrorists over there, so that we don't have to fight them here." The plots and attack plans against the United States previously described along with the Madrid and London attacks effectively challenge that once comforting, but now patently discredited, argument. (my emphasis)

Personally, I never took much comfort from that argument of Bush's because it was always hokey. But I see what it means.

It is worth noting, though, that its not only in retrospect that his point there is obvious. That was one of the main arguments that opponents of the Iraq War made in 2002 and 2003 before the invasion. It was obvious beforehand that neglect of Al Qa'ida and the Afghanistan/Pakistan situation would be an inevitable result of invading Iraq. Even the preparations for invading Iraq in 2002 were already having that effect.

Hoffman makes a useful distinction between four categories of Al Qa'ida influence. One he calls Al Qa'ida Central, Bin Laden's core organization that does detailed planning for the most spectacular attacks, like the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa and 9/11:

It is believed that this hardcore remains centered in or around the Afghanistan and Pakistan borders and continues to exert actual coordination, if not some direct command-and-control capability, in terms of commissioning attacks, directing surveillance, collating reconnaissance, planning operations, and approving their execution. (my emphasis)

A second category he calls Al Qa'ida Affiliates and Associates. These are groups that are primarily focused on local grievances but "over the years have benefited from Bin Laden's largesse and/or spiritual guidance and/or have received training, arms, money and other assistance from al-Qaeda." It's worth noting his list of organizations falling into that category, which includes "Al Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI)", which he calls "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" here:

This category includes groups such as al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI), the late Abu Musab Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (formerly Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad), Asbat al-Ansar, Ansar al Islam, Islamic Army of Aden, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Jemaah Islamiya (JI), Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), and the various Kashmiri Islamic groups based in Pakistan - e.g., Harakat ul Mujahidin (HUM), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Laskar-e-Tayyiba (LET), and Laskar i Jhangvi (LiJ). Both the number and geographical diversity of these entities is proof of al-Qaeda's continued influence and vitality.

Most of these groups are not any direct threat to the US, despite their Al Qa'ida affiliations of one kind or another.

He calls a third category Al Qa'ida Locals. This one includes what are often called self-starters. He mentions Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested in Washington State in December 1999 on his way to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, who had a previous background in the brutal Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA). He also includes the "7/7" London bombers of 2005, who did not have a specific terrorist background but were attracted to the Al Qa'ida version of jihad. In both Ressam's case and the 7/7 bombers, Al Qa'ida is thought to have given some general direction and assistance.

The final category Hoffman calls the Al Qa'ida Network, in which "the relationship with al-Qaeda is more inspirational than actual". He places Mohammed bouyen who killed Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands in that category.

Hoffman mentions a number of cases that were initially thought to be jihadists operating more-or-less on their own that later investigation indicated had significant Al Qa'ida involvement or direction. The details are really case-specific, so I'm not entirely sure what to make of these claims. He mentions the 7/7 bombers, two of which were in Pakistan and likely were trained by Al Qa'ida; that one seems credible to me and has been widely reported.

I was more surprised by his comment that "Spanish authorities now intimate that evidence is accumulating that al-Qaeda was behind the march 2004 Madrid bombings". That seems plausible enough. But I haven't been following that story closely enough to be able to make any kind of more informed judgment on it.

In other words, although he says the first two categories present the "most salient threat", but the last two categories could present an increasingly deadly threat. He defines the overall Al Qa'ida threat this way:

Thus, al-Qaeda's goal remains as it has always been: to inspire radicalized Muslims across the globe to join the movement's holy fight. Not only does al-Qaeda retain its core operational and command-and-control capabilities, it has shown remarkable resiliency and a stubborn capacity for renewal and regeneration. Even though its personnel may be dispersed, al-Qaeda remains a hierarchal organization: capable of ordering, planning and implementing bold terrorist strikes. Issues of classification and sensitive collection, as well as the British government's gathering of evidence for a number of criminal cases that remain sub judice, have prevented further, full, public disclosure of al-Qaeda's active involvement in the London attacks - and virtually every other major terrorist plot unmasked in the UK since 2003. However, suffice it to say that what is publicly known and has been reported in unclassified sources clearly points to such involvement. (my emphasis)

That is the sort of thing that people are used to seizing upon and reading it for their own partisan line of the moment.

But Hoffman's analysis does not seem to me any reason to panic. He makes it clear that the international jihadist threat must be countered primarily through intelligence and police work, not by bombing Middle Eastern countries.

And he certainly is not using his estimation of the Al Qa'ida threat as a justification to continue the Iraq War into the indefinite future. "The Bush administration's new strategy to "surge" 21,000 American troops into Iraq is the latest fundamental misreading of our enemy's mindset and intentions", he writes.

Tags: bruce hoffman, iraq war, terrorism