HARD TIMES

Defenders of our Iraq policy are having a hard time. They used to say that those of us opposed to the war from the git-go "hate America." Now that 62% of us oppose the war, that's a hard
accusation to make stick: do the majority of us hate the country? Or do we hate what our government is doing over there?

Justifying what we are doing in Iraq gets harder and harder. Wars are killing orgies. The worst thing about killing orgies, besides the killing, is the danger that the killing can't be stopped. How
can this killing be stopped? It has snowballed way out of control! There are at least three wars raging now in Iraq.

As the defenders of the war find less and less justification for continuing fighting it, they like to
attack the war's critics, for lack of anything constructive to offer. Debra Saunders, for instance,
has long been a vocal supporter of this administration, and its Iraq fiasco. No longer able to
reasonably defend the failed policy, she instead falsely accuses Noam Chomsky of hypocracy
and inconsistency. To do so, she quotes a Muslim convert who unconverted after discovering
that some of the radical Muslims endorse hatred and violence. She cites him to prove that these are bad people we are dealing with, cutthroats, murderers and thieves. As if Chomsky didn't
know this! She goes on to quote the convert regarding 9/11: "Chomsky made no real effort to enter the minds of the perpetrators" (after advocating such an effort).

Clearly, neither Saunders nor the person she quotes has read Chomsky's book, 9/11. Much of that best-seller is devoted to Chomsky doing exactly what they are accusing him of not doing.
Why doesn't Saunders reference Chomsky himself, rather than a second-hand source who is
badly misinformed? The New York Times has referred to Chomsky as, arguably, America's leading intellectual. I will second that motion. To prove him in error, and that is certainly
possible, facts are required, not fiction.

Reply, if you wish, to jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

THE GATES OF HELL

I'm not referring to the newly named secretary of defense. As far as I know, he is well qualified.
I'm referring rather to the pre-war warning of Amr Mousa, secretary general of the Arab League: "an invasion (of Iraq) would open the gates of hell."

Iraq is hell, not only for its people, but for our people unfortunate enough to be stuck there. Since the present impasse is unacceptable here at home, there is growing support for Sen. McCain's proposal to send more troops. It's like a poker game: "I'll raise the bet 20,000 (40,000) troops." "We'll see your 20,000 (or 40,000) and raise you back." Sending more troops now will escalate the violence (casualties) and cause ever more Iraqis to join the insurgents. They will take the increase as proof we are determined to stay permanently, as many already believe. 70% say our presence is the main reason for the insurgency.

How did we get into this situation? Before the war then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Shinseki (I've referred to him in previous blogs) told a congressional committee it would take more than 200,000, and possibly three or four hundred thousand troops to do the job. Both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz told the press and Wolfie told the same committee that was ridiculous, the general
was wrong, and it wouldn't require more than 100,000, if that.

In other words, a career professional with many years of the best training, and combat experience, knew less than these two geniuses who had neither military training nor
experience. And Congress believed the word of the novices over that of the professional!
That's insanity! So we are where we are, and that's that.

And remember, it wasn't just Shinseki's own opinion. He was working with, and spoke for, a
highly qualified staff of experts who had studied this question from every angle. Not only that,
Tony Zinni, the Marine general who had headed Central Command before Gen. Frank, had also
studied the question intensely in case he was called on to attack Iraq. His findings agreed with
those of Shinseki.

Gen. Abizaid told Congress just last week that Shinseki had been right: they needed a lot more troops. We have lost a lot of blood and treasure for that mistake. And opened the gates of hell! Why bring up old controversies? We study history in the hope that we might learn from it. But will we learn?

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

NOW WHAT? IS MC CAIN RIGHT?

"You can't fool all the people all the time" ---Abe Lincoln

"The Devil always over-reaches" ---Spanish Proverb

"There is a thin line between steely resolve and mulish obstinancy, and the signature failing of the Bush administration where Iraq is concerned may be the simple fact that it has never understood this, that it crossed the line a long time ago without thought or hesitation and never looked back." ---Leonard Pitts Jr. (in the Statesman Journal, 11/14/06)

Senator Mc Cain said on Meet the Press that there are really only two options open to us in Iraq: either win or get out. The only way we can win, he said, is by substantially increasing the number of troops we have there. Then we must start in Anbar Province (currently held almost completely by the insurgents), clean them out town by town, hold those towns and move out-ward from them to clear the region. Once that is done, we can pacify the rest of the country.
How many troops will that take? Mc Cain won't say: that's up to the generals. Clearly it will
require a lot of troops! Probably at least double what we have there now. Gen. Shinseki, you will recall, testified in Congress that it would take three or four hundred thousand troops to do the job. He was ridiculed and forced into retirement for his honesty and courage.

Sen. Mc Cain cannot guarantee a favorable result if we follow his plan. Indeed, the British tried this back in the 1920s and failed. I recently answered an editorial in the Albany Democrat-Herald as follows:
"Your editorial (11/10/06) states well the questions we now face in Iraq.
Certainly we all wish the choices were better, and the prospects for peace more
promising. As you say, our hope for an overall victory in Iraq is probably not in
the cards.
As you also state, "having a plan does no good if we cannot carry it out." The
reason we can't carry it out is because there is no civil order there, on which to
build a social compact. The divisions are too deep, the hatreds too intense, the blood-
letting too widespread and determined.
We are afraid to leave, aware of the increased violence that will surely follow
our departure. And we rightly dread that. But will it be any different if we wait a year
to leave? Or two years? Once we are gone, scores will be settled, the law of the jungle
will prevail. A new Saddam will emerge, is my guess, probably wearing a religious
turban, and backed by Iran.
While we tread water, and buy time (to do what, we haven't a clue) our young
people continue to die. It cost us 104 dead and three or four hundred wounded in
October. Can we afford to lose 100+ each month for another year? Two years?
Indefinitely? For what? To save face? To protect some politician's feelings? To
impress the terrorists? No one can say.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

CONFUSION REIGNS (AND RAINS)

Rumsfeld: "You go to war with the army you have." (And also the level of understanding you have, he might have added).

"Winging it and filling body bags as we sort out what works reminds us of the moral dictates and the cost of incompetence in our profession." ---Marine Gen. Mattis, a commander in Iraq quoted by Tom Ricks in Fiasco.

It is said that generals are always "fighting the last war." Some of us however want to go back 65 years to WW II, a war between nation-states fought over territory. In that kind of war, when you take and hold land, you win. Both Japan and Germany had the decency, once beaten, to quit fighting and cooperate in rebuilding.

That model doesn't fit our present situation in any way. We are now involved in four wars at once, none of them primarily territorial, or between nation-states. In addition to our battle with insurgents and jihadists, two more of these wars are within Islam, and would have little to do with us, had we not chosen to jump in and remove the existing restraint (Saddam).

One of these is the Sunni-Shia struggle for supremacy not only in Iraq, but throughout the Middle East. We are being attacked by both sides. At the same time, we are supporting both sides. We are training and arming a basically Shia army and police that represent and will be controlled by, the Shia majority. But we are also supporting Sunni demands for a share in the government and the oil revenues. That's not going well.

The other war raging in Islam is between those who seek religious rule over the 1.4 billion Muslims world-wide (these are the Islamists), and those (the majority) who prefer secular rule.
This divide splits both the Shia and the Sunni. At the moment though, the Islamists seem to dominate in both Iraq Shia, and in Iran. But the Islamists in turn are divided between those who advocate and practice violence to achieve their ends (the jihadists), and the anti-violence ones who seek change by democratic means.

Our disregard (contempt, actually) for Muslim feelings and opinions is increasingly making it difficult for moderate Muslims to be heard and heeded. "Kicking in doors, knocking down buildings, burning orchards, and firing artillery into civilain neighborhoods was bound to be counterproductive in the long run," a Marine colonel wrote in the New York Times.

Guantanamo and the torture of prisoners harm us immeasurably in the Muslim world, and have unrecognized costs as well. It helps and drives the extremists. Cheney's advocacy for water-boarding, for instance, has a direct cost in G. I.s killed by snipers in Iraq. It's called the law of unintended consequences. Our treatment of prisoners is a big recruiting tool for the
jihadists. They love it! It violates Christian "just war" doctrine, the Geneva Conventions, and Muslim just war doctrine. And common sense. Immorality is always stupid.

Stop me if I'm wrong! jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

COUNSELS OF FEAR

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary".
--- H. L. Mencken

Not all of our hobgoblins are imaginary, but our responses to them are nevertheless bewildering.
For example, Al-Jazeera, the Arab broadcasting company is planning to open an English-language news channel that will be anchored from Washington, D. C., starting this Nov. 15. We should be excited by this access to Arab views and news, because it will provide important ways
to gain understanding of "those people." (The ones Sen. Lott complained that we have no way of understanding, as I cited in a recent blog.)

But we are afraid we can't handle the truth, as least as the Arab world sees it. A poll found that 53% of us are opposed to the launch of this new channel. And two thirds of us think our gov't shouldn't allow them into this market! Isn't that astounding? What in the world are we afraid of? Don't we need to see what the Muslim world sees going on in Iraq? Many reporters
say (off the record) that American TV doesn't show a fraction of the real destruction our people are doing there. Seymour Hersh does see more than most. He broke the Mai Lai massacre story from Viet Nam, and the Abu Ghraib revelations from Baghdad. He writes for The New Yorker (not known as a scandal sheet), and he has long been recognized for integrity. Although a Pulitzer Prize winner, he is now being slimed by the right-wing attack dogs for remarks he
made to the press in Canada. He alleged that the brutality against Iraqis done by our troops is much more common and widespread, and worse than it ever was in Viet Nam. Well, don't we need to know that, if it's true? Or if it isn't? Hersh may be mistaken. I certainly hope to God he is. But we need to know.

Another instance of unseemly fear is being manifested by our government in its efforts to keep our tactics used on detainees out of the courts, where they become public knowledge. The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to disclose details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. To reveal such knowledge, even to the detainees' attorneys "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage," government lawyers told the judge.
That's because the enemy could use this knowledge in their training to resist questioners.

That's clearly hogwash! Damage to whom, is the real question. There's no doubt that public knowledge of what our people do to detainees is not something they want out in world opinion. You can be sure the word is out and about at Guantanamo, where these people are now being held. Also, dozens, if not hundreds of prisoners are being released regularly from Gitmo, and are going home. So let's face it: the enemy knows what we are doing. The one's in the dark are our own trusting souls, who see no evil, hear no evil, etc. Former guards will write books, as will former prisoners. So it will all come out. It always does. This is damage control here, pure and simple.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net if you wish to respond.