Technical news
I've tinkered with the comments utility a bit; there's now a link to an RAQ ("rarely asked questions") page with some comment rules. Also, there's a bit more room to compose your comments, and a link about how to add HTML things to your comments like links, italicizing, and so forth.

The comment rules are just intended to serve notice that comments that "cross the line" may be deleted at my discretion, and commenters may be blocked. This is not meant to respond to anyone's recent comments about the Die Zeit item below. I added the rules because of a dispute about a different, older blog entry that got out of hand, in my opinion. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:11:00 PM -- |    

 

Coalition Forces Are in the Capital
Not "Baghdad International Airport" in. All the way in, to "pretty much the center of the city," and apparently there to stay, according to AP:

Asked if the U.S. Army's V Corps and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were on a probing mission, [Central Command spokesman] Thorp said, `"they're not coming out."

"That's not the intent to come back out," he said. "They're in Baghdad."

On TV, I've heard it's one or two dozen Abrams tanks. I saw something like it called a "thunder run" for Najaf, I think it was: show of force into the city center, see what happens. Is it "house of cards" time after all? There are still lots of "Special Republican Guard" and fedayeen types, but they may be feeling like discretion is the better part of valor right now, at least.

I guess sometimes you keep charging. I suppose there's a chance Thorp meant they're not coming out of Baghdad ... but they might head back to the airport. If not, if they're really setting up camp in downtown Baghdad, I hope this doesn't backfire, as in having to send some big rescue mission in after them and shoot the city to hell in the process. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

And still a long road ahead even if this action goes well.

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UPDATE, 4/5: Well, the link above now tells a different story. I should have guessed from the "HREF" that this was a "subject to change" item. The incursion was apparently an in-and-out action after all, not a here-to-stay one. As everyone knows by now, there was some serious fighting, and at least one American tank and APC were lost (according to an NPR report this morning, the AP-NYTimes link just mentions the tank). Also, "center of the city" is a relative term. I guess if you're a spokesman in Qatar, it seemed like "center of the city" was true. If I can recover the older item, I'll add the link here.

Another New York Times report, about what seems to have been a different 60-tank incursion, reports a lot of Iraqi soldier and at least some civilian casualties. This doesn't seem like a good approach with this many refugees on the road. posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:26:00 AM -- |    

 

Baghdad

posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:44:00 PM -- |    

 
Bully pulpit
On March 20, German blogger Guenter Hack ("hirn&verbr.antville") wrote:

The Bush administration is a Yakuza of international politics. Inside the Mafia-like organization strict rules prevail, outside the organization might makes right [gilt das Faustrecht]. Every attempt to change that is taken as an affront against the mafia and is at minimum punished with an entry in the official blacklist.

You don't have to buy the rest of Mr. Hack's item* to find more than a grain of truth in those remarks. Democrats like myself still recall the Florida recount saga with clenched teeth, particularly the "bourgeois riot" rent-a-mob once so lovingly applauded by Paul Gigot. Neighboring Canadians read our ambassador's comments that booing American hockey teams is "not helpful" to the damaged American-Canadian relationship. Even Republicans complain about what happens if they cross the Rove administration:

Although all administrations use political muscle on the opposition, GOP lawmakers and lobbyists say the tactics the Bush administration uses on friends and allies have been uniquely fierce and vindictive. Just as the administration used unbending tactics before the U.N. Security Council with normally allied countries such as Mexico, Germany and France, the Bush White House has calculated that it can overcome domestic adversaries if it tolerates no dissent from its friends. [...]

Under such pressure from the administration, lobbyists and lawmakers who voiced doubts about Bush's economic policies have publicly reversed themselves. "I think I should have kept my mouth shut," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in one such recantation last month.

Of course, Exhibit A of late has been Donald Rumsfeld. In his widely noted "Arrogant Empire" piece for Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria writes:

"Donald Rumsfeld often quotes a line from Al Capone: "You will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone."

But should the guiding philosophy of the world's leading democracy really be the tough talk of a Chicago mobster? In terms of effectiveness, this strategy has been a disaster. It has alienated friends and delighted enemies. Having traveled around the world and met with senior government officials in dozens of countries over the past year, I can report that with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it."

I write with the deepest respect, admiration and appreciation for the performance of the 3rd Division, the Marines, the airborne divisions, the British forces, and all the troops in the field in Iraq. But the assumptions of this campaign -- a quick victory with a relatively small force -- have clearly been unrealistic. General Myers can bluster all he wants: for American fighting forces to be reduced to two and sometimes one meal a day tells me their supply lines were inadequate.

It makes me wonder what the effect of this Bush administration arm-twisting mentality is on their own government, let alone on freely elected governments elsewhere. Did Rumsfeld run roughshod over the advice and doubts of generals and intelligence officers regarding how to wage war? That's what Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article "Best Laid Plans" argues pretty persuasively:

Rumsfeld repeatedly overruled the senior Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff, the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "He thought he knew better," one senior planner said. "He was the decision-maker at every turn."

On at least six occasions, the planner told me, when Rumsfeld and his deputies were presented with operational plans -- the Iraqi assault was designated Plan 1003 -- he insisted that the number of ground troops be sharply reduced. [...]

One witness to a meeting recalled Rumsfeld confronting General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, in front of many junior officers. "He was looking at the Chief and waving his hand," the witness said, "saying, 'Are you getting this yet? Are you getting this yet?'" [...]

The high-ranking former general described Rumsfeld's approach to the Joint Staff war planning as "McNamara-like intimidation by intervention of a small cell" -- a reference to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and his aides, who were known for their challenges to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War.

And read what analyst William Arkin had to say early this year:

Civilians have implemented an unhealthy firewall between themselves and the military at large. Officers are dissuaded from speaking up. High-level promotions are increasingly made on the basis of political litmus tests and uniformity of thought, not because of military guts or brainpower. Witch hunts are underway to find anyone who has spoken to the news media. Even at the war colleges, uniformity of thought is the new rule, and the environment promoting dialog and inquiry has evaporated. More and more of the war itself is conducted from ad hoc secret cells, where entry is restricted.

I'm focusing here on how Rumsfeld and the Bush administration do what they do, not why. I also support the general idea of civilian control of the armed services, although I think that belittling a respected general in front of his subordinates is not how to do that.

Where does the arm-twisting approach come from? I wonder if some of it comes from the fubar election of 2000 itself. It seems to me that some of what we're seeing today is an outgrowth of the tactics used to win the post-election dispute, and then of the strategic choice to assert a mandate like any other, when the election of 2000 actually provided a mandate unlike any other.

Rumsfeld may be outside of that effect; he wasn't part of the campaign. But his boss was, and his boss's advisors were, and they either can't or more likely won't rein him in. And why would they -- they play the same game themselves. It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of the presidency as a "bully pulpit."

It's my opinion that if Gore had won the election, the 9/11 attacks -- and Gore's own view of Iraq -- would probably still have brought us to this war. You don't need to be a Republican, and you don't need to have proof of an Al Qaeda/Saddam connection, for the concern about Iraqi WMD to loom a great deal larger on 9/12/2001 than they did on 9/10/2001. I also think that the different threat levels that Americans and Europeans face, and perceive, account for the lion's share of the difference in opinion polls about Iraq and -- as we should all honestly recall -- Afghanistan before that.

But even the oft-maligned Clinton administration did better with similar challenges. As Paul Glastris pointed out in Slate, ("Turkey shoot: How Bush made enemies of our allies"), the Clinton administration was able to round up NATO allied support for the Kosovo war, even from countries like Greece where it was unpopular, and even though it wasn't approved by the UN. So under a Gore administration, it's conceivable we might have had a few more allies now on that bridge at Nasariyah. Instead, the bruising "who cares" approach that the Bush administration has taken is costing us now, and will continue to cost us in the future.

Let me be clear: I still think the war in Iraq is justified and necessary, and that Saddam's defeat will leave Iraqis better off. And that is independent of the precise preparations for, conduct of, or aftermath of that war -- within reason. That doesn't mean I believe the Bush administration is doing the job well, or that they prepared well diplomatically -- or militarily. The U.S. and U.K. armed forces in the field -- they're doing their jobs well (as are the Australian and other coalition forces, no doubt.) I distinguish the arrogance and bullying behavior I see in Bush administration officials from the issue at hand: disarming Saddam and ending his regime.

This might seem like too limited, too quaint a critique: aren't we just talking about hurt feelings, not national interests? I don't think so. We ignore other peoples' honor, prestige, "face" -- whatever you or they want to call it -- at our peril. No one is ruled by practical interests alone; the "old Europe" snub, the "so how much money are we really talking here?" approach to Turkey and other regions-- these unnecessary errors set up countervailing gusts of anger from these regions that could not have helped U.S. plans. Our approach has helped make it not merely a matter of expediency or self-interest for other nations to oppose our policies, but sometimes a veritable point of pride. That was stupid and unnecessary.

I will not be voting for George W. Bush in the next election (either). His administration made no effort to avoid a transatlantic diplomatic calamity. It has relied on and even coerced wishful thinking about the conduct of a war I still consider sadly necessary. It pursues similar fiscal folly, reckoning the benefits of tax cuts out of any realistic proportion to their costs and inequities. It tramples civil liberties, or tries to, with what might fairly be called "faith-based" certainty in the righteousness of its cause. And all the while it fails to adequately fund or even adequately plan domestic measures to help avert -- or even adequately mitigate -- more calamities like the one that caused its undeserved stature in the eyes of Americans. It has never had my allegiance, and it never will.

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* Hack adduces the death penalty, rent-a-cops, and American religiosity -- among other things -- as evidence for his thesis; on another occasion, he mentioned the failure to sign on to the International Criminal Court as similar Mafia-like behavior. I mention this in case you agree with him on these particulars; I don't, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Also, purely as an aside, here's one source on the Yakuza. The word "Yakuza" apparently means "8-9-3," a worthless card combination. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:32:00 AM -- |    

 

Die Zeit: "UN inspectors: Schroeder's peace tactics were 'crazy' "
Jeff Jarvis alerted me to this item: German reporters Jochen Bittner and Reiner Luyken recently interviewed UN weapons inspectors now cooling their heels in Larnaka, Cyprus. Their article -- "The German blame for the war" -- in this week's Die Zeit is pretty astonishing. That is, if you equate the business of disarming a bloodthirsty totalitarian dictator with the farce that Blix and certain members of the Security Council made out of it.

The following is a translation of the article.* As the reporters mention, the inspectors could only speak anonymously, and were under "strict" orders from New York not to speak with journalists. I've added a few emphases here and there.

The Mediterranean waves lap against the narrow sand beach in front of the Flamingo Beach Hotel. In front of the plain tourist hotel's entrance in Larnaka on Cyprus, bored policemen stand with their submachine guns dangling at the hip. The UN weapons inspection team is staying here, an hour and a half west of Baghdad by plane, after its hasty departure from Iraq. In the lobby, CNN war reports run 24 hours a day. For three and a half months, the inspectors were the focal point of world events. Now they are only spectators. Time to think about what was, and what could have been. The UN inspectors talk, but only anonymously. Orders from New York are strict: No interviews with journalists.

Could this war have been prevented? Yes, say some [inspectors]. But with a surprising argument: Germany, France and Russia made war unavoidable with their purported peace politics. Gerhard Schroeder's categorical 'no' to military deployment was simply "crazy." "We might have been able to fulfill our mandate," one hears in the hotel lobby.

When the UNMOVIC (United Nations Ongoing Monitoring and Verification) inspectors opened their headquarters on November 27 last year ... they believed Resolution 1441 was a potent tool to uncover Saddam Hussein's terror arsenal: access to all installations. Unannounced inspections, even of presidential palaces. Interviews with scientists. Absolute freedom of movement, helicopters with high-tech sensors.

The 120 inspectors noticed soon, though, that they would not reach their goal without the full cooperation of Iraqis. But they waited in vain to be approached. A warning presentation by Hans Blix on January 15 in the Security Council didn't change things. Iraq made its first concessions when Secretary of State Colin Powell presented sensational pictures, videos, and tape recordings of mobile bioweapons labs, rocket launching ramps, and munitions bunkers. And as the American threat of war became more and more clear and found more support.

The excessive surveillance of the inspectors by minders of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate (NMD), which UNMOVIC had long objected to, then dropped off. For the first time, three interviews took place with Iraqi scientists with no minders present. The Iraqis also delivered some weapons programs documents that had been demanded in vain until then.

Why no German troops?
Blix delivered a more conciliatory situation assessment on February 14. This was the basis for Germany, France and Russia to speak of "functioning inspections" and to increasingly distance themselves from America and Great Britain. The governments in Berlin, Paris, and Moscow felt confirmed in the conviction that their peace strategy would lead to success.

The inspectors in Baghdad saw things completely differently: their position was suddenly weakened. Documents were held back again. Scientists appeared -- if at all -- only with their own tape recorders. After the conversations they had to deliver the cassettes to the NMD. The hope for greater assertiveness that had grown following Powell's speech diminished again. "After February 14 we didn't get much any more."

In hindsight a clear pattern emerged, from the viewpoint of the UN inspectors: "Saddam Hussein followed every step in the Security Council closely. As soon as divisions appeared, cooperation diminished." [emphasis added] The officials in Baghdad only became more cooperative when military pressure increased. Rhetoric never impressed Saddam Hussein, the inspectors say, the deeper the quarrels split the international community, the surer he felt more himself.

Hans Blix himself got a taste of the revived self-confidence of the Iraqi leadership following February 14. When the chief inspector asked General Amir Al-Saadi, head of the NMD, where 550 mustard gas artillery grenades were that the UN suspected were still in country, the officer claimed baldly that they had been been lost to a fire in the arsenal. But curiously there were no residual traces of that.

"We were dependent on military pressure", an inspector emphasizes. They made no progress without the US aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and without the troop deployments to Kuwait. They experienced the diplomatic tug-of-war between Washington and the European peace axis as a historical irony: from their point of view, every demand for a peaceful solution reduced the pressure on Iraq and made peace more unlikely. Success was less a question of time than one of the credible threat of the use of force. [emphasis added] "Where," the inspectors ask today, "were the teeth?" More time, the demand of Germany and France for inspections, would have been well and good. But: "They should have sent their own troops and ships." [emphasis added] In their opinion, installing the kind of traffic monitoring system important to effective control would only have been possible with a united Security Council backing them up. But to threaten force as a last resort, without seriously preparing for it -- in their view, that could not impress Baghdad's dictator.

Many times important details about Iraq were brought to the inspectors unofficially, or they learned more over a confidential coffee-table discussion than from official scientist interviews: this, too, a clear indication that the state apparatus was withholding information systematically. In one-on-one discussions, the UN personnel would hear again and again how the Saddam Hussein regime had ruined the lives of a whole generation. The academic elite, educated in the West and cosmopolitan, had to watch as their children were impoverished materially and spiritually in a totalitarian system.

Saddam Hussein's dictatorship retained one capability despite the destruction of the Iraqi middle class: weapons production. The most visible sign for that were the Al Samoud rockets, which broke the permitted maximum range of 150 kilometers. Their destruction in the first weeks of March was interpreted by many not just as a signal, but as true progress on the way to disarmament. The laconic comment of one inspector: "Too little, too late."

Iraqi concessions, inspectors report, were no longer in any relation to the American pressure. Iraq underestimated the resolve of the superpower. After George Bush announced his last ultimatum, NMD officials surfaced one last time at the Canal Hotel [UNMOVIC headquarters]. But even these papers contained nothing that could have stopped the course of events. [emphasis added]

Bittner and Luyken save what is possibly the most damning quote for last:

Was the mission programmed to fail? No, say the inspectors: a united Security Council might have forced a peaceful disarmament. But even then an ambivalent thought that sounds surprisingly hard coming from an inspector: "How does one best handle a tumor -- with a quick surgical procedure or with long, difficult chemotherapy whose success is doubtful?"

It will be interesting to see how Blix et al spin this: probably countervailing inspector interviews, wistful sighs about "Project Mirage," etc. But this article lays out a pretty solid case against the European position before the war: fundamentally unserious, naive moral preening. (Perfect qualifications to help run Iraq after the war! -- I say let the Pentagon hand that off to Iraqi opposition leaders, not to Turtle Bay types.)

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Translator's note: I usually don't translate an entire article, but this seemed like a "read the whole thing" item; should an English translation with these reporters' bylines appear, I'll link to that right away and up front. Also, I'll use this space to register any edits to the translation, but I think it's pretty accurate.

* The first paragraph was translated by Kim Hill, a fellow Jeff Jarvis reader who forwarded it to me. Thanks! I had initially skipped the paragraph as "atmospheric," but it's worth including. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:34:00 PM -- |    

 

I.e., never
Michael Moore speaks out:

Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator, and I hope he's removed as soon as possible. But nonviolently.

(via Jim Treacher).

I.e., hopefully never, OR Get me rewrite!
From "War could last for months," in the Washington Post:

Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey said the Army and Marine forces converging on the Republican Guard south of Baghdad will have no choice but to continue to attack those Iraqi defenders. "We've got no option, we're committed," he said. But, he added, "I wouldn't go into Baghdad before I had another armored division come up into my rear."

Ow! posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:57:00 PM -- |    

 
My four year old's question this Sunday


"Daddy, are those the Beatles?" posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:32:00 PM -- |    

 

We are all against this war
...CDU/CSU party official and Bundestag member Wolfgang Schaeuble hastens to assure Die Zeit in this interview. Excerpts:

DIE ZEIT: What share of the blame does the German government have for the failure of the UN Security Council's failure to find a consensus?

Wolfgang Schaeuble: They have a relatively large share, since they were the first to say -- as early as last summer, quite unilaterally -- "no matter what the United Nations decide, we will not participate." [...]

ZEIT/dlf: Mr. Schaeuble, the CDU/CSU is divided over the war in Iraq. Ms. Merkel supports the American policies, as she says, in all their consequences; Mr. Stoiber expresses himself very circumspectly and cryptically, and other, even CDU leadership like Peter Mueller say that this war isn't right. What do you say?

Schaeuble: The statements that you cite actually don't contradict each other. Actually all of us are against this war, and and none of us wanted it, we decided that in our Bundestag caucus and in the party executive board. If at all, if it were unavoidable, then it should not have happened without a decision by the Security Council. There are no differences [between us] in this matter. We regret that it has happened in this way. The blame for what happened is not just on one side -- naturally also on the side of the German government, but not just them. We are also nevertheless on the side of the American government. Even friendly partners make mistakes -- there can even be bad mistakes -- but that doesn't change that we're on their side. And even worse than what is happening now, including for peace and our security, would be a humiliating defeat of the United States of America. [...]

ZEIT/dlf: If the chancellor says that we should be ready, looking forward to the future, to [spend more on defense], might that not also lead to differences in security policy?

Schaeuble: Now comes the question -- one will have to discuss this a bit more thoroughly: do German policymakers want a European security policy and defense efforts somewhat as a replacement of the Atlantic partnership or as a counterweight to the Americans? That would meet strong opposition by the [CDU/CSU] Union, I would consider that a fateful error. I believe we must strengthen European defense efforts -- including through more cooperation in Europe -- to shrink the imbalance between the military capabilities and efforts of the U.S. and the Europeans, because it doesn't make sense that we always just criticize the Americans and simultaneously say what all the Americans must do, in Kosovo, the Balkans, and elsewhere, and what we Europeans can't do and make less effort to do. I hope that we in German politics can maintain or rebuild the basic consensus between the great political groupings, that Atlantic partnership and European unity aren't alternatives, but different sides of the same coin, that are inseparably connected. European unity doesn't succeed as an alternative to the Atlantic partnership. Europe won't be united against America, the last weeks have proven that.

While I don't agree with all of it, this seems a politic and sensible point of view to me. Notice that Schaeuble doesn't support the U.S. failure to get a second UN resolution before going to war; even a friendly German politician like Schaueble can't and won't abandon that position. But the attitude seems positive, including the acknowledgment (expressed elsewhere) that a US victory in Iraq is far preferable to the alternative.

A prospective CDU/CSU/FDP coalition continues to lead the SPD/Green coalition by a substantial margin in opinion polls. On the other hand, no German CDU/CSU politician has improved their approval ratings lately, and chief U.S. supporter Angela Merkel's is at an all-time low.

More importantly, bear in mind that even if there is a German "regime change" (at the ballot box!) anytime soon, the strength of German "independence from/opposition to the U.S." attitudes is also fairly well proven now, and is even shared by some in the moderate German right. Don't expect a German Tony Blair, and don't expect German foreign policy to fall in line with American policies, even if a new coalition takes the helm in Germany.

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UPDATE, 4/7: Welcome, Winds of Change readers. I've added a link from within the interview ("is divided") to an earlier post of mine detailing a bit more about the division within the CDU/CSU. See also a post-German-election item I wrote last fall, featuring one of the most informative political maps I've ever run across. Finally, a within site "Atomz" search on "CDU" will lead to archived weekly post files containing these and a number of other items mentioning the CDU. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:30:00 PM -- |