KingWatch.org Makes FOX News!

It's a good day! www.kingwatch.org has made Fox News!

FOXNews.com - Iowa Lawmaker's Brashness Earns Notice - Politics | Republican Party | Democratic Party | Political Spectrum

America's War in Iraq

Since I've been AWOL for awhile (periodically, sheer depression takes over!), I offer the following lengthy diatribe...


“America’s Iraq War and the Future of the Middle East”

America’s war in Iraq is nearly four years old, and has already cost the United States some $261 billion. An April 2006 study by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a government agency, estimated the Iraq War will easily cost the U.S. more than the earlier Vietnam War. In fact, a second study by two highly respected scholars at Harvard University estimates a total price tag of $1.27 trillion dollars by war’s end! Put another way, with that much money one could spend a whopping $1 million a day every day for the next 2,737 years!!

And yet, for all the costs in both money and manpower, what has America really gained through its Iraq War?

As of the moment, America’s military forces are virtually trapped in Iraq. More than 2500 American troops have died in Iraq, and thousands more have been wounded, with no end in sight and no clear exit strategy. The U.S. government, moreover, doesn’t even keep track of Iraqi civilian war casualties.

The outpouring of worldwide sympathy for America after the 9/11 attack has virtually dried up, and America’s few remaining allies in the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” have begun to pack up and leave Iraq (Japan’s last few troops returned home to Tokyo on July 25th, for instance). International opinion polls show that overall distrust of America is on the rise worldwide, and especially in the Middle East where people increasingly view the Iraq War as an American war on Arabs and Islam.

Violence of all sorts is on the rise. Worldwide acts of terrorism have actually increased in recent years. Sectarian violence between Iraq’s many religious and ethnic groups grows as well, with the civilian death toll in Iraq easily averaging 50 to 100 deaths a day. Estimates vary, but the overall civilian death toll in Iraq stands at between 35,000 and just over 100,000 since the war began.

After nearly four years of war, the Bush Administration still cannot offer a clear exit strategy for American troops to leave Iraq. At best, the Bush Administration talks vaguely of U.S. troops leaving when the Iraqis can take care of their own security concerns. But, with the ever-rising violence and sectarian strife in Iraq, when might that be?

Worst of all, the Bush administration has sown confusion about the war at home in the U.S. by constantly and repeatedly expressing ever-changing justifications and goals. At various times, the Bush Administration has claimed that American troops were in Iraq for the following reasons: to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his regime, to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, to prevent Saddam from giving WMDs to Al Qaeda, to end Saddam’s alleged nuclear weapons program, to bring democracy to Iraq, to jump-start democratization in the Middle East, to enhance America’s security, to better protect Iraq’s oil reserves, to fight terrorism, to protect Israel, to end sectarian violence in Iraq.


Perhaps my least “favorite” justification, because it seems so morally indefensible, is one that Vice President Dick Cheney has often repeated: “We are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we don’t have to fight them in the streets of America.” Yes, I suppose that’s good for America, but it’s probably of very small comfort to the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who’ve died supposedly to protect America’s streets.

As we all know, Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction in 2002. Iraq also had no nuclear weapons program. Saddam even had no concrete connection with Al Qaeda, and in fact Osama Bin Laden had no love for Saddam’s secular regime. Recently declassified pre-war intelligence reports verify these points.

Americans are no safer now than before; in fact, they are dying in greater numbers due to the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor is Israel any safer, as the recent war with Hezbollah in Lebanon proved. In fact, I would suggest that the overall security situation for both the U.S. and Israel has worsened appreciably. With America bogged down in Iraq, the Bush Administration is too distracted and overextended to deal effectively with the more serious threats of a nuclear-armed Iran or North Korea. Meanwhile, and perhaps more significantly, the Israeli-Palestinian problem is left to fester, despite the fact that it’s America’s lack of serious commitment to bringing justice to the Palestinians that most angers the Arab street!

One last point: so long as the insurgents in Iraq continue to hold out against America’s vastly superior military forces, then U.S. military supremacy is called into question.

So what went wrong? Why has America’s Middle East policy proven such a dismal failure?

It seems to me, as recent political cartoons by Doonesbury suggest, that the Bush Administration has let emotion and ideology, and not history or the facts on the ground, guide its Middle East policy.

George Bush, America’s president, really does let his religious beliefs guide his policy decisions, and nowhere is that fact more evident than in Bush’s foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle East.

For example, in George Bush’s worldview, people and nations are divided into two distinct camps: good and evil. You cannot be a little of both. You cannot sometimes be one, and sometimes the other. America and those who support America are “good,” because Bush believes America’s motives in the Middle East are good. Everyone else is “evil,” because they oppose America’s goals in the Middle East. The “terrorists” are especially evil, in Bush’s mind, and so that is why he uses the term “terrorist” to describe so many different and diverse groups, from Hamas to Hezbollah to Al Qaeda to Iran to Syria, to any and all insurgents in Iraq…well, you probably get the idea.

What Bush is decidedly NOT interested in are the historical conditions that gave rise to such groups as Hamas and Hezbollah. Nor does he care about their goals or motivations. They are simply branded as “evil,” and therefore nothing they say or do is worthy of attention. Being “evil,” they can have no justification for their actions whatsoever.

Fighting “evil,” however, provides America an excuse to ignore international law and go against international treaties when convenient. The U.S. is arguably going against the Geneva Conventions by holding detainees indefinitely and without charge at its base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. One could also cite the repeated use of torture by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Conversely, America’s Allies, especially Israel, America’s number one ally in the Middle East, can do no wrong. As the so-called ‘lone democracy’ in the Middle East, Israel has been given near carte blanche by the Bush Administration to do what it feels it needs to do to its neighbors. The one catch is that Israel must frame its actions against the Palestinians or Lebanese in terms acceptable to American ears. Israel must justify its actions in terms of pursuing “security” and combating “terrorism,” for instance. For both Israel and the U.S., the ends (combating so-called “terrorists”) truly justify the means (killing great numbers of innocent civilians and reducing the remainder to miserable circumstances).

And innocent civilians are now dying by the hundreds every day in the Middle East: in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Afghanistan, and in Israel and Gaza, to name but the most obvious examples. Yet even as the death toll worsens, Bush still refuses to let his vision of the Middle East be clouded in any way. Why is that?

Bush, it seems, is pursuing a long-term vision for the Middle East. The 9/11 attacks made the war on terrorism the central mission of the Bush presidency. Bush is convinced the U.S. is fighting terrorism in Iraq, and ultimately preventing Iraq from becoming a haven for terrorists by turning Iraq into a democracy. The Bush Administration sees Israel doing the same, fighting terrorism, in its violent incursions into Gaza and Lebanon. Yes, there will be an unfortunate loss of innocent civilian life, but in the end there will be a better and more peaceful Middle East once the terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have been shattered. Destroy the “evil” groups, and you destroy “evil,” and then only the good guys remain. At least that seems to be the new Bush doctrine, and Bush is holding steady to that vision, despite the fact that the rest of the world pretty unanimously would prefer an immediate ceasefire and an end to all hostilities in the Middle East.

In the long run, however, the Bush vision is likely to prove detrimental to U.S. and Israeli interests. The first problem is that it looks too much like Imperial America trying to impose its will and desires on the Middle East. Middle Easterners note repeatedly that while the U.S. claims to be acting in their best interests, the U.S. does not consult with them or listen to what THEY want. Second, there is no guarantee that superior military power will completely destroy the Iraqi insurgents or Hamas or Hezbollah. In fact, as the situation in Iraq suggests, punishing military action only produces MORE insurgents and terrorists. And let’s not forget that it was Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian fighters in Lebanon in the early 1980s that helped create the conditions for the rise of Hezbollah in the first place. Third, the peoples of the Middle East are getting absolutely sick and tired of seeing images on TV of the dead civilian casualties of American or Israeli bombs and bullets. The greater the number of dead Arabs, the more the Arab street turns its anger and frustration against America, and it questions whether Americans value Arab life as highly as any other. Finally, the fact that America is very inconsistent in promoting democratization in the Middle East breeds distrust of the sincerity of America’s motives. America, the Arab street notes, is most enthusiastic in pushing democracy on countries like Syria and Iran that it doesn’t like, while doing little to encourage greater democracy in friendly, pro-U.S. oil sheikdoms such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

What, then, of the future of the Middle East? Normally, I like to try and remain somewhat confident that things will get better some day. Right now, however, I am more depressed about the future of the Middle East than ever before.

The main problem seems to be with the U.S. and with American foreign policy in the Middle East. As the world’s lone superpower, America needs to start implementing policy in the Middle East that recognizes the region’s complex history and socio-political circumstances. The U.S. must stop reducing the Middle East to a simple stereotype of “good” versus “evil.” The U.S. must also follow through on its declarations of wanting to promote greater justice and democratization throughout the Middle East. As I said earlier, the U.S. needs to be as aggressive about pushing democratization in the pro-U.S. oil sheikdoms like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as in countries the U.S. doesn’t much like such as Syria and Iran.

Above all, the U.S. needs to win the “hearts and minds” of the Arab street! This can best be done if the U.S. finally and aggressively pursues a comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian problem. This settlement must guarantee the Palestinians a measure of justice, which might best take the form of a Palestinian state with enough land and sufficient international aid to insure its viability. If the U.S. would help the Palestinians achieve justice, it would go a long way towards convincing the Arab street that the U.S. cares as much about the lives and livelihoods of Arabs/Moslems more generally.



Some Supplementary Comments:

Bush’s worldview is a key problem: it lacks complexity, nuance, practicality, or historical context; it favors simplicity, vagueness, religious symbolism and terminology, and empty platitudes. Policy-makers are NOT listening to the area experts.


Note on Iraq & Afghanistan and so-called America’s democratization project in the Middle East: In order to have a democracy, a country must first have a state! Democracy is likeliest to take hold where such important elements exist as the rule of law, transparency in government actions, a healthy civil society, high levels of literacy and education, a productive market economy, a strong middle class, limited inequality. Germany and Japan after WWII are NOT good analogies to Iraq as in both of the former cases well-established states already existed; the changes that occurred in Germany & Japan was merely in the style of government. Nations, in the final analysis, can only build themselves; they cannot be easily imposed from the outside.

NBC News on 8/3/06 reported 2800+ civilians killed in Iraq in June and July of 2006 alone!
That same day, the Prime Minister of Lebanon reported over 900 Lebanese dead and over 1 million displaced as a result of Israel’s invasion. The killing, obviously, continues unabated.

Peace!
Historian

Fearmongering

It Ain't World War III, Folks

People keep tossing the phrase "World War III" around. "This could be the start of World War III," they say. Or, "The war against terror is really World War III."

Bullpucky.

We're not in World War III, at least not yet. Let's look at the numbers...

World War I:
5,565,146 Allied Military Casualties
3,157,833 Allied Civilian Casualties
3,386,200 Central Military Casualties
3,485,000 Central Civilian Casualties
The total is: 15,596,071 dead people. Say that out loud. source

World War II:
I'm not gonna break it down - it's too depressing.
The total is: 62,537,400 dead people. Say it out loud. Pronounce the number. Sixty-two million, five-hundred and thirty-seven thousand, four hundred people died. The Soviet Union alone lost 23,200,000 people. Over twenty-three million, eleven and a half million of which were civilian casualties. In Poland, over 16% of the population was killed. source

The United States lost 126,200 people in World War I, and 418,500 people in World War II. These are big numbers. Staggering. For comparison, my hometown has around 10,000 people.

It's hard to put together numbers for the War on Terror, I'm finding. Here are the numbers that are out there...

2,667 American Military Casualties in Iraq. source
234 Coalition Military Casualties in Iraq. source
333 American Military Casualties in Afghanistan. source
568 "Non-Iraqi Civilians" killed in Iraq (contractors, journalists, etc.) source
90,000 Iraqi Civilian Casualties source
2,762 Civilian Casualties in the 9/11 Attacks source

This totals up to... Give me a minute... 96,564 - 90,000 of which are Iraqi civilians. Just shy of 100,000 people are no longer here because of the war on terror.

I'm sure all the numbers I've listed here are probably wrong - they're most likely estimates - but they're probably pretty close. I'm also sure that I've forgotten some aspect of the war on terror (the bombings in Madrid and London, for instance).

The point of all this is simple. Our current situation is horrible. One wartime death is too many - ask the widow who buried her husband last week just a few miles north of here. The soldiers serving in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East deserve our utmost respect for doing what they're doing. But let's not call it World War III. One-hundred thousand casualties thus far is a sickening number, but that's a small fraction of the sixty-two million lost in World War II.


But on the Other Hand...

I recently received an e-mail from someone saying how wonderful it was that the world has gone 1,000 days without war.

Bullpucky.

We're burying people here. Kids in uniform are dying. They say we're in peacetime because "it takes two governments in conflict" to qualify as war. Hey, if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. We ARE in war. We may not be warring against another government, but we're at war. It's not World War III, but it's war, nonetheless.


But NOW What?

The sad part is that the War on Terror is not by our choosing - it was foisted upon us rather violently on 9/11 - but the vast majority of casualties are now coming from the war in Iraq, a war we started. Even President Bush now admits that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11. (Anyone remember Osama bin Laden?)

I support our troops, but I do question our leaders. Do we need to defend ourselves against terrorists? You betcha! Do we need to stretch our military thin in Iraq while Iran and South Korea are rattling their sabers? Hmmm...

Let's look at it. We've got troops in Iraq, but not enough to quell the insurgency. But too many troops have been there for too long - we're running out of resources (personnel, petroleum, money). Do we do as the Republicans want and "stay the course?" That seems kind of silly to me - we've been staying the course too long already, and it doesn't seem to be doing much good (the Taliban are making a comeback in Afghanistan, you know). Or do we do as the Democrats want and bring the troops home? Well, it would destabilize the region tremendously if we pulled all our troops out at once, and there are people running amok in the Middle East who would like to do us harm. A conundrum.

Some people are saying we should set a deadline. Give people warning before we pull our troops out. That sounds good, I guess... Except that it gives the bad guys a heads up that if they lay low until the deadline they'll be free to run amok again. It's nice to think that the Iraqi military would be ready to take over by that time, but geeze, that looks kinda doubtful, doesn't it?

You know, maybe we should look at the past for ideas. The Marshall Plan worked. We managed to occupy Japan after WWII for quite some time with no insurmountable obstacles. We can find a way to do it again. We can do this.

Here's one thing I do know for certain. We absolutely, positively CANNOT cut taxes and maintain a war footing at the same time. We absolutely, positively CANNOT afford to keep giving a hefty percentage of our money to other governments in exchange for oil to keep our SUV's running. We absolutely, positively NEED a change in our leadership. A drastic change. Thankfully the elections are coming up soon!

Rewards Offered in Two Animal Abuse Cases

Has anyone checked the whereabouts of Iowa congressman Steve King during either of these time frames?

Reward Offered in Muncie, Ind. Animal Abuse Case

Reward Offered in Portage, Ind. Animal Abuse Case

I mean, he could have been extremely depressed (and feeling a bit retaliatory) after H.R. 503 -- which would ban horse slaughter in the United States for human consumption -- passed the House last week despite his well-rehearsed tirade about the need to keep horses, cows, pigs, sheep, fish -- and even our PETS!) in their place and his vote AGAINST the horse slaughter ban.

Just think what one could do with that $5,000.00 ($2,500.00 for each case) reward:

1) Donate it to the Steve King Psychiatric Wellness Fund

OR

2) Donate it to a cause where there's actually HOPE for successful results: Joyce Schulte for Congress.

Iowa's Median Income DOWN

Thanks to the Detroit Free Press, we can see just how far Iowa's median income has dropped in the last 6 years. More evidence of the Bush economy in action.

Donald Rumsfeld and the Nazis

The latest line from Rumsfeld/Cheney/Rove/Bush is that anyone who disagrees with them is an appeaser - just like the fools who tried to make nice with Hitler to forestall World War II. Frank Rich writes in the New York Times:

Last week the man who gave us “stuff happens” and “you go to war with the Army you have” outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion” and fail to recognize the “new type of fascism” represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of “Defeatocrats” but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.

What made Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech noteworthy wasn’t its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That’s old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

Here's what Rummy was talking about, the British Prime Minister's 1938 meeting with Hitler, giving Hitler what he wanted:
















For your consideration, here's Rumsfeld the appeaser, giving Saddam what he wanted in 1983:


Frank Rich continues:

Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t go to Baghdad in 1983 to tour the museum. Then a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug. Well before Mr. Rumsfeld’s trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator’s use of torture — “beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks” — on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had “disappeared.” American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.

According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr. Rumsfeld’s Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which can be viewed online at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.) Within a year of his visit, the American mission was accomplished: Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since Iraq had severed them in 1967 in protest of American backing of Israel in the Six-Day War.

In his speech last week, Mr. Rumsfeld paraphrased Winston Churchill: Appeasing tyrants is “a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.” He can quote Churchill all he wants, but if he wants to self-righteously use that argument to smear others, the record shows that Mr. Rumsfeld cozied up to the crocodile of Baghdad as smarmily as anyone. To borrow the defense secretary’s own formulation, he suffers from moral confusion about Saddam.

Let there be no doubt: Rumsfeld's inept handling of the entire Iraq mess is just one of the profound deficiencies of the Bush administration. America is much weaker because of them. A true patriot sees that and works to stop their damage.