Cheney's New War
The Bush administration now has a perilous conviction: that it will fight its way, Bill Clinton style, out of its current quagmire. What it seems to have forgotten is that Bill Clinton's approval ratings only improved with his persecution over a charge that no one took seriously independently apart from their party loyalties. But what's more remarkable here, as Bush's approval ratings plummet, is not the administration's willingness to put up a fight. It is their willingness to betray even their allies as part of a purely reactive and defensive posture against any criticism. This is not a communications strategy, unless strategy means preaching to the choir via the foghorn of Fox News.
When Dick Cheney makes the charge that critics of the war who criticize the Bush administration's about pre-war intelligence, he is not just through political countermeasures at (woefully subdued) Democratic incoming: he is denying members of his own party the outs they need to run successful political campaigns, at a time when they have just been reminded by Democratic congressional victories that they are vulnerable.
That is why Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) cannot afford, given his presidential ambitions for 2008, not to speak out (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501450_pf.html) against the notion that criticism of the war is dishonest and unpatriotic. Most of the country seems now to have some reservations about the war, and the polls ought to make this painfully obvious: to simply go to war against such criticisms is to court a different level of political disaster. Republicans are getting scared: they ought to be.
Notably Hagel is also a Vietnam Veteran, an increasingly vocal group. McCain has resisted the administration's systematic use of torture. And then there is the conservative Democrat and pro-military hawk John Murtha, for whom Cheney's remarks were simply the last straw. Murtha is nice example of how the administration's new war -- this time internecine -- will blow up in its face as mercilessly as the last one: he is calling for troop withdrawal not long after Republicans spearheaded a measure to set a time-frame for American withdrawal from Iraq.
As the New York Times has it: ["Our troops have become the primary target for the insurgency," Mr. Murtha said. Insurgents, he said, "are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence." He went on to say that, before the Iraqi elections in December, the country's people and its emerging government "must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy."]
Murtha has perhaps become aware of some new thinking on Iraq. Nir Rosen, for instance, argued in the latest Atlantic Monthly that "cutting and running" may yield more positive consequences than negative (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-withdrawal):
· Civil war between Sunnis and Shiites will be ameliorated rather than exacerbated by American withdrawal, because Shiites are now seen as collaborators.
· Pro-Sadam Sunni forces are no longer capable of defeating Shiites: they no longer have the hardware.
· U.S. withdrawal will end the insurgency.
· The foreign Jihadi element is "numerically insignificant"
· The Kurds will secede whether or not the United States leave, and Turkey's concerns will not prevent a an independent Kurdistan
· Iraqi's are fiercely nationalist and while not simply be taken over by Iran
· The United States will not create by force a secular, tolerant democracy in Iraq; the invasion of Iraq already has lead to a theocracy
· The United States' only hope for repairing Iraq is leaving it alone
If these points seem difficult to believe, consider the fact that Rosen speaks Arabic and has spent sixteen months where most reporters fear to tread: among ordinary Iraqis. Rosen's article offers an interesting comparison to James Fallows' excellent piece, Why Iraq Has No Army (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-army). The point here is that in a way, the decision as to whether to cut and run is an illusory choice: the administration never was committed to establishing security in Iraq, just as it was never committed to the alternative course of actually fighting rather than egging on bin Laden and his sympathizers.
Why then, invade a country and maintain a presence without a commitment to establishing order and security -- not even security for one's own troops? That question is baffling until one reflects on the fact that scratching an itch until it becomes raw is not an attempt at a cure: you get to keep the battle going. You stay stimulated, keeping both the source of irritation and the gratifying engagement with it alive indefinitely. Psychologists have a term for this type of behavior: it is obsession-compulsion. Unfortunately, it is an endless and debilitating circle; it goes nowhere because it is meant to go nowhere -- the prospect of a cure is perilous; in this case, the Bush administration cannot be left without its symbiotic enemy. Whether one accounts for this need in terms of grandiosity or pure corruption, the fact is that the war in Iraq was initially a tremendous political and financial boon to allies of the administration.
Hence there is a wretchedness to Cheney accusing anyone of hypocrisy or dishonesty -- so hubristic, so reckless, that one wonders how much longer the administration can get away with it. There is a profound betrayal here: Democrats supported the war-vote as a compromise, with explicitly language concerning inspections and the use of war as a "last resort" - language we now know Bush and Cheney had no intention of honoring. The thin charade of merely tolerating inspectors while massing troops on the border of Iraq, the well-documented pressure placed on the CIA, and the dramatic use of flimsy evidence to make Democratic political resistance more difficult mean that Cheney now knows precisely what criticisms of pre-war intelligence are about. To conjure up self-righteous pronouncements about weapons of mass destruction -- the mere phrase should induce shame -- is the kind of cynicism which, to put it simply, takes a Cheney. But again, the real recklessness is the willingness to betray other Republicans -- and, effectively, to ruin reputations by betraying the concerns of the public at large about the folly of the war.
As to the merits of Cheney's claims, Jim Fallows has a nice summary of the rush to war that is the real bone of contention (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-fallows/what-bush-isnt-addressin_b_10621.html).
The administration is now on the losing side of two wars. Of course, it's an old principle that fighting a predicament may only worsen it; sometimes there is a wisdom to not acting. Vietnam is a war that Cheney managed to avoid by deferment; it's too bad that the same thing cannot be said for Iraq.
When Dick Cheney makes the charge that critics of the war who criticize the Bush administration's about pre-war intelligence, he is not just through political countermeasures at (woefully subdued) Democratic incoming: he is denying members of his own party the outs they need to run successful political campaigns, at a time when they have just been reminded by Democratic congressional victories that they are vulnerable.
That is why Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) cannot afford, given his presidential ambitions for 2008, not to speak out (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501450_pf.html) against the notion that criticism of the war is dishonest and unpatriotic. Most of the country seems now to have some reservations about the war, and the polls ought to make this painfully obvious: to simply go to war against such criticisms is to court a different level of political disaster. Republicans are getting scared: they ought to be.
Notably Hagel is also a Vietnam Veteran, an increasingly vocal group. McCain has resisted the administration's systematic use of torture. And then there is the conservative Democrat and pro-military hawk John Murtha, for whom Cheney's remarks were simply the last straw. Murtha is nice example of how the administration's new war -- this time internecine -- will blow up in its face as mercilessly as the last one: he is calling for troop withdrawal not long after Republicans spearheaded a measure to set a time-frame for American withdrawal from Iraq.
As the New York Times has it: ["Our troops have become the primary target for the insurgency," Mr. Murtha said. Insurgents, he said, "are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence." He went on to say that, before the Iraqi elections in December, the country's people and its emerging government "must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy."]
Murtha has perhaps become aware of some new thinking on Iraq. Nir Rosen, for instance, argued in the latest Atlantic Monthly that "cutting and running" may yield more positive consequences than negative (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-withdrawal):
· Civil war between Sunnis and Shiites will be ameliorated rather than exacerbated by American withdrawal, because Shiites are now seen as collaborators.
· Pro-Sadam Sunni forces are no longer capable of defeating Shiites: they no longer have the hardware.
· U.S. withdrawal will end the insurgency.
· The foreign Jihadi element is "numerically insignificant"
· The Kurds will secede whether or not the United States leave, and Turkey's concerns will not prevent a an independent Kurdistan
· Iraqi's are fiercely nationalist and while not simply be taken over by Iran
· The United States will not create by force a secular, tolerant democracy in Iraq; the invasion of Iraq already has lead to a theocracy
· The United States' only hope for repairing Iraq is leaving it alone
If these points seem difficult to believe, consider the fact that Rosen speaks Arabic and has spent sixteen months where most reporters fear to tread: among ordinary Iraqis. Rosen's article offers an interesting comparison to James Fallows' excellent piece, Why Iraq Has No Army (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-army). The point here is that in a way, the decision as to whether to cut and run is an illusory choice: the administration never was committed to establishing security in Iraq, just as it was never committed to the alternative course of actually fighting rather than egging on bin Laden and his sympathizers.
Why then, invade a country and maintain a presence without a commitment to establishing order and security -- not even security for one's own troops? That question is baffling until one reflects on the fact that scratching an itch until it becomes raw is not an attempt at a cure: you get to keep the battle going. You stay stimulated, keeping both the source of irritation and the gratifying engagement with it alive indefinitely. Psychologists have a term for this type of behavior: it is obsession-compulsion. Unfortunately, it is an endless and debilitating circle; it goes nowhere because it is meant to go nowhere -- the prospect of a cure is perilous; in this case, the Bush administration cannot be left without its symbiotic enemy. Whether one accounts for this need in terms of grandiosity or pure corruption, the fact is that the war in Iraq was initially a tremendous political and financial boon to allies of the administration.
Hence there is a wretchedness to Cheney accusing anyone of hypocrisy or dishonesty -- so hubristic, so reckless, that one wonders how much longer the administration can get away with it. There is a profound betrayal here: Democrats supported the war-vote as a compromise, with explicitly language concerning inspections and the use of war as a "last resort" - language we now know Bush and Cheney had no intention of honoring. The thin charade of merely tolerating inspectors while massing troops on the border of Iraq, the well-documented pressure placed on the CIA, and the dramatic use of flimsy evidence to make Democratic political resistance more difficult mean that Cheney now knows precisely what criticisms of pre-war intelligence are about. To conjure up self-righteous pronouncements about weapons of mass destruction -- the mere phrase should induce shame -- is the kind of cynicism which, to put it simply, takes a Cheney. But again, the real recklessness is the willingness to betray other Republicans -- and, effectively, to ruin reputations by betraying the concerns of the public at large about the folly of the war.
As to the merits of Cheney's claims, Jim Fallows has a nice summary of the rush to war that is the real bone of contention (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-fallows/what-bush-isnt-addressin_b_10621.html).
The administration is now on the losing side of two wars. Of course, it's an old principle that fighting a predicament may only worsen it; sometimes there is a wisdom to not acting. Vietnam is a war that Cheney managed to avoid by deferment; it's too bad that the same thing cannot be said for Iraq.
posted by Wes at 3:47 PM
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