Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

Former Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the U.S. Role In Iraq’s Future; Plus Lebanon, Syria, More

Ambassador Ryan Crocker spoke at a meeting of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Monday evening.  His topic was “The U.S. Role in Iraq’s Future.”  In addition to being ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, Mr. Crocker was ambassador to Lebanon from 1990 to 1993, Kuwait from 1994 to 1997, Syria from 1998 to 2001, and Pakistan from 2004 to 2007, among other positions.

Ambassador Crocker’s speech was fascinating, as were the Q's and A's that followed.  What I am going to do here is to list of some of what Ambassador Crocker said, almost in bullet-point fashion.  Unfortunately, that loses the flow of his speech, but it’s all I can do.  To the extent that I have misstated any of what Ambassador Crocker said, I apologize to both the reader and to Ambassador Crocker.

President Obama has said that, with the ending of our combat role in Iraq, we were turning the page.  Ambassador Crocker said that many Americans have viewed it as closing the book.

Ambassador Crocker said that, in 2007, the United States’ “re-missioning” (his word) of our forces to protect civilians started a virtuous cycle.  The Sunnis thought we had their back, so they went after the forces of Al Qaeda in Iraq.  The Shias noticed what the Sunnis were doing, and they went after extreme elements on their side.

The first round of elections in Iraq was important; the second round was more important.  The losers complained, but then they went home.

Of all of the possible points of failure that could happen in Iraq, the failure of the “rule of law” could be the most likely possibility.  34 judges have been killed so far.  It is a huge challenge.

There is a legacy of fear in Iraq, something that we in the U.S. cannot understand.  The Sunnis are afraid of the future; will they be persecuted like they were in 2006 and 2007?  The Shias are afraid of the past; they worry that the Baath will come back.  And the Kurds are afraid of both the past and the future: Will Baghdad come back like it did?  Ambassador Crocker said they would joke that Prime Minister Maliki saw a Baath behind every bush.  But then you have to realize that, when Mr. Maliki left Iraq in 1979, he left a day ahead of his assassins.

Unlike the United States, with our two oceans and with Mexico and Canada as neighbors, Iraq lives in a rough neighborhood.  Many of its neighbors would like to see a weak Iraq.

The U.S. has a critical role to play in Iraq’s future.  Ambassador Crocker negotiated two agreements with the Iraqis in 2008.  The Status of Forces Agreement provides for all U.S. forces to be gone by the end of 2011.  While neither the Iraqis nor President Obama can (politically) extend this deadline, Ambassador Crocker hopes that there is a way to manage it so some U.S. forces can stay.  He thinks that the American people would be okay with us staying as advisers as long as there are no casualties.  (Like Korea.)

The other agreement was the Strategic Framework Agreement, covering things like trade, agriculture, economic matters, student exchanges, cultural matters, etc.  This needs to be fully implemented.

We need to stay in Iraq because we are the one player that all Iraqis trust.  We are assurance.  You can really see it between the Arabs and the Kurds, but it is also true with other Iraqi groups, too.  The Iraqis have learned to give in to us on things.  They need to learn to give in to each other.  But it will take time.  Ambassador Crocker said that early in his time in Iraq, when major issues were discussed, he had to be in the room to get things agreed to.  By the end of 2008, he would be available by phone, but he did not need to be in the room.  While we can’t play this kind of mediating role forever, he doesn’t think we will be able to get it done by the end of 2011.

The Iraqis, with our help, have come to the point that a stable, sustainable, pluralistic democracy is possible – if we stay involved.

The U.S. needs strategic patience and a willingness to continue to provide resources to help the Iraqis.  It will be fewer resources than we have provided in the past, but we still need to provide some.

Some U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq for a while.  If all of our forces leave Iraq at the end of 2011, Iraq will have no ability to protect itself.  This will be risky, especially vis-à-vis Iran.  Iraq will not be getting things like planes, etc., until 2013 and later.

Ambassador Crocker concluded that while we have turned the page in Iraq, it was only the end of an early chapter in the book.  What happens now will depend in how engaged we will stay, how intelligent we will be.  Ambassador Crocker was (is) very concerned about the effect of the budgetary pressures in Washington on our foreign policy.

A comment:  When Ambassador Crocker was making his comment about staying engaged in Iraq, I thought of a comment that was made recently on one of my posts on Libya: “Where is Charlie Wilson when we need him!!!”  This comment may be even more appropriate here.  The movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” ended with the Russians defeated, and Charlie Wilson pushing for money in Congress for schools and other non-military aid for Afghanistan.  But Congress didn’t care anymore.  The Russians were gone, and we lost interest.  We didn’t stay involved.  And look at what happened.  We need to avoid forfeiting all that has been accomplished in Iraq so far because we lose interest and won’t stay involved.

                                                 *  *  *

Ambassador Crocker noted that the President of Iraq was invited to Kuwait for the recent twentieth anniversary celebration of the liberation of Kuwait.  When Ambassador Crocker saw him there, he said he was surprised to see him.  The President of Iraq said he had been surprised to be invited and that when the invitation came, he accepted it before Kuwait could realize they made a mistake.

                                                 *  *  *

Ambassador Crocker said that if you want to see how things are breaking in Lebanon, watch Whalid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze.  If he is talking about the West and NATO, etc., that is a good sign.  If he is spending time in Damascus, that is not good.  Lately, he has been doing the latter.

                                                 *  *  *

The United States can take some credit for the military stepping aside in Egypt and Tunisia.

                                                 *  *  *

The Saudis view the Shias like the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, viewed Blacks in 1952.

                                                 *  *  *

The most significant historical moment in Syrian history, or at least recent Syrian history, was February of 1982, when Hafez al-Assad used three divisions to bombard the town of Hama and the Muslim Brotherhood members located there.  The attacks not only eliminated the Muslim Brotherhood but also thousands of civilians.  The bad blood between Assad’s Alawi sect and the Sunnis continues to today.  In Syria, February 1982 is always just the day before yesterday.

There is the potential for a vicious civil war in Syria.  Certain military units have been organized specifically as regime protection units.  They would not expect to survive an overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.  Some might think that a civil war in Syria would be good.  But a Sunni-majority government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood could be very bad for Israel.

Also, the current regime might, in a last ditch attempt to survive, start a war with Israel and them argue that anybody who opposed the government was a friend of Israel’s.

A comment:  Consider Argentina’s invading the Falklands in 1982 in an attempt to rally the country and maintain its own survival.

Syria is the wildest card in a whole pack of wild cards in the Middle East.

Iraq – A Somewhat Belated Summing Up

At the end of August President Obama spoke on the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom and what we were going to do in Afghanistan.  I talked about the Afghanistan part of his speech a couple of times (President Obama Gets Afghanistan Wrong – Again and Part 2).  Now I wanted to talk about Iraq.  (I realize this is late.  President Obama’s speech was over a month and a half ago.  But these comments are less for current debate and more, perhaps, for the history of it all.)

                                               1.

In his speech the President tried to make it sound like what has happened in Iraq over the last 20 months was his plan, that what happened was what he wanted all along.  Which is not true.  What has happened in Iraq since January of 2009, with U.S. troops withdrawing to their bases and combat troops leaving by September 1, 2010, was agreed to between the U.S. government and the Iraqi government while President Bush was still in office.  And when the rest of our troops leave by the end of 2011, that too will be as provided in the plan President Bush entered into with the Iraqi government.

In fact, what has happened in Iraq is not what Barack Obama wanted to do when he was a candidate for President.  It is true that President Obama’s plan, as a candidate, was to withdraw from Iraq in, I believe, 16 months.   But Barack Obama did not want to leave Iraq in 16 or 18 or 20 months from January of 2009.  He wanted to leave in 16 months from January of 2007.  He did not want to leave once we had succeeded.  He wanted to leave while we were failing.  His plan was to not do the surge and the change to a counterinsurgency strategy.  His plan was to get out – now!*

Fortunately, Barack Obama did not get to decide in January of 2007; George Bush did.  And during the two-year period from January, 2007 to January, 2009, the surge and the switch to a counterinsurgency strategy changed the course of the war.  Even though then-Senator Obama predicted the surge and the counterinsurgency strategy would fail, they succeeded.  Which allowed us to start leaving after having succeeded, instead of while failing.

                                                2.

I have mentioned this point before, but I feel obligated to do it again:  I am tired of hearing people say that President Bush (and British Prime Minister Tony Blair) lied to the American people (and the British people) by saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, when he did not.  They did not lie.  The fact Saddam Hussein did not have WMD does not mean people did not honestly believe, before the invasion, that he did have WMD.  There were a few reports, here and there, questioning whether Saddam Hussein had WMD, but the vast majority of people (and the vast majority of other countries) believed Saddam had WMD.  They were wrong, as were President Bush and Prime Minister Blair.  But the fact President Bush and Prime Minister Blair were wrong, does not mean they lied.

                                                 3.

What brings up another issue:  Back in July, Karl Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal** that his biggest mistake in the White House was to not insist to President Bush that they had to respond to Democratic charges that President Bush had lied about Saddam Hussein and WMD.  Teddy Kennedy was among the first, if not the first, to make the charge:  “All the evidence points to the conclusion [that the Bush administration] put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth.”  Others followed: John Kerry, John Edwards, Jay Rockefeller, Al Gore.  Of course, all of them had previously said that Saddam Hussein had WMD, but that did not stop them from later saying, in so many words: “Bush lied, people died.”

Mr. Rove notes: “At the time, we in the Bush White House discussed responding but decided not to relitigate the past.”

As Mr. Rove how says, this was a mistake.  Actually, it was a huge mistake; it was a mistake on so many levels that it is hard to know where to start.  But let me try.  First, and least, not responding to these attacks was unfair to those of us who supported the President’s decision to invade Iraq.  We were with the President when he needed our support for his decision to do something about the risk of Saddam Hussein.  When President Bush was attacked for allegedly lying about the WMD, it was as if we were being attacked, too – because we had supported a lie.  When President Bush did not respond, we were left on our own to explain why the decision to invade Iraq was the right one.  And it was harder to do with the President not defending himself.

Second, it was wrong because it weakened the American people’s support for the war in Iraq.  If one side criticizes and the other side does not respond, eventually some people will start to believe what the opposition is saying, no matter how wrong it is.  After all, if you aren’t willing to fight back, some people will believe it is because you think you are wrong.

Third, the men and the women in our Armed Forces deserved a President who was willing to defend his decision to send them to fight.  When President Bush accused of sending troops to die because of his lies, he needed to respond.  They did not think they were fighting because of a lie, and he needed to defend the basis on which they were fighting.  If he wouldn’t respond for himself, he needed to respond for them.

Fourth, the decision to not respond was wrong as a matter of history.  It is not only important to do what is right, it is important to explain why what we did was right – so those who come later will understand why we did what we did.  That means explaining, again and again, if necessary, that what we did in Iraq was right.  By not responding to these charges, President Bush let his opponents write the first draft of history.  Sometimes first drafts can be corrected, but it takes time – and sometimes it doesn’t happen.  By not responding to these charges when they were made, the Bush Administration has increased the chances that the history of our involvement in Iraq won’t be written correctly.  And that could lead future generations to make mistakes of their own because they didn’t understand what really happened in Iraq and why.

                                               4.

Here is a point that I almost forgot, but that is very important:  The fact we did not find any WMD in Iraq does not mean the reason for the invasion changed.  The reason for the invasion is still the same:  We had every reason to believe, and most people and most counties did believe, that Iraq had WMD in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and that Saddam Hussein could no longer be trusted with WMD.  The fact that Iraq and Saddam Hussein did not have WMD does not change anything.  In particular, it does not mean the belief that Iraq had WMD in violation of UN resolutions was not an appropriate justification for the invasion in 2003.  Decisions made in 2002/2003 could only be made on the facts as we knew them in 2002/2003.  The fact that some of those things turned out to be not true does not mean that they were not an appropriate basis for decisions made at that time.

I don’t think the Bush administration understood this.  Once we didn’t find any WMD, they seemed to think they had to come up with another reason/justification for the invasion.  Instead of defending the honest belief that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had WMD in violation of UN resolutions, and that Saddam Hussein could not be trusted with WMD, as the proper reason for the war (they didn’t even respond to charges that President Bush lied about the WMD – see above), they started talking about bringing democracy to the Middle East and Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorists as reasons for the war.  But those weren’t the reasons.  And it is doubtful that these reasons were an appropriate or sufficient justification for an invasion.

Maybe it seemed, shortly after the invasion, when things were going good, that bringing democracy to the Middle East was a great goal.  The Cedar Revolution was happening in Lebanon.  Even Egypt was loosening political restrictions.  Democracy in the Middle East is a worthy goal, but it is not, and was not, a proper justification, either legal or political, for sending U.S. troops (and the troops of our allies) to invade Iraq.

Similarly, Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorist groups were not, by themselves, a sufficient reason for invasion.  It is true that his connections with various terrorist groups increased the concern about what he might do with WMD, and that this concern, when combined with WMD held in violation of UN resolutions, provided a legal justification for invasion.  But when you combine his ties to terrorist groups with concerns about what he might do with WMD, you are really just back to the fact of WMD held in violation of UN resolutions, and a legitimate concern about what he might do with them, as the basis for the invasion.

Also, the shifting of the reasons/justifications for the invasion made it look like we really didn’t have a good reason for the invasion.  Changing the explanation probably lost the US support for what we were doing in Iraq.  It certainly gave some tangential support to the argument that President Bush lied about the WMD.

We had a perfectly good reason for invading Iraq.  We should have kept stating it and kept explaining the invasion on that basis – because it was the best explanation and because it was the real reason.

                                               5.

In discussing Iraq with President Bush in the summer of 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell talked about the so-called the “Pottery Barn rule”:  You break it, you own it.  And he was right, to a large extent.  You can’t go into something, tear down the system, and then just leave.  If you break something, you have to fix it. 

What this meant in Iraq was that, once we invaded, we had an obligation, before we left, to establish some kind of decent government to replace the one we had destroyed.  The fact that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD, didn’t mean that we could say: “Oops, sorry, excuse us.”  And just leave.  It’s not like we could put Saddam Hussein back in power because there weren’t any WMD.  Maybe the other things he did were not enough, on their own, to justify his removal, but once we invaded, they were enough to justify keeping him out of power.  (Please note I am not talking about his trial or his execution; those I do not know enough about those to have an opinion.) 

Colin Powell used the rule as a warning about going in.  I use it as a statement of our responsibility once we were in:  After the invasion, we had an obligation to the Iraqis to help set up some kind of decent government before we left.  It didn’t have to be perfect, but we couldn’t just abandon them.  Who knows who or what might have gained power in such a situation.  Plus, it would have been wrong for us to just leave.  It is not the kind of thing that Americans do.  We couldn’t just leave because the going was tough.  We had an obligation, to the people of Iraq.  And that obligation didn’t go away because things got hard or we got tired. 

                                               6.

Finally, a few comments on whether, knowing all that we know now, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the right one.

In The Wall Street Journal of September 2, 2010, Daniel Henninger discussed what would have happened “If Saddam Had Stayed” (in the words of his headline writer).  Mr. Henninger said, in part:

“Let us assume that Mr. Obama's ‘smarter’ view [back in 2002] had prevailed, that we had left Saddam in power in Iraq. What would the world look like today?

Mr. Obama and others believe that Saddam and his nuclear ambitions could have been contained. I think exactly the opposite was likely.”***

I agree with Mr. Henninger.  First, though, it is important to understand – and accept – that, between the initial invasion, which seems to have gone fairly well, and the arrival of General Petraeus and his new counterinsurgency strategy in early 2007, the situation in Iraq was handled very poorly.

The question is, given all of the mistakes we made, would it have been better to never have invaded at all?  The problem with trying to answer such a question is that we do not know what would have happened if we had not invaded.  We know what happened in the event of an invasion (because that is what we did), but we don’t know what would have happened if we had not invaded.

There is a tendency, when trying to determine whether a particular policy worked out or not, to compare what did happen with the way things were before anything was done.  That assumes that, if nothing was done, everything would have stayed just as it was.  That, of course, is wrong.  Things would have changed, in any case.  The question is: How?

By the fall of 2002, the sanctions in Iraq had been in place for over a decade, and they were weakening.  Human rights groups worried about the impact of the sanctions on the people of Iraq.  Countries and companies wanted Iraqi business. 

Evidence discovered after the invasion showed how Saddam Hussein used the United Nations-run Oil-for-Food program to mitigate many of the effects of the sanctions and to secure support for their end.  The Oil-for-Food program had been set up to allow Iraq to sell oil to buy food and medicines for the Iraqi people.  But Saddam Hussein didn’t care about the people of Iraq.  Instead, he used the program to give oil vouchers to people who he thought could help Iraq end or evade the UN sanctions.  Vouchers went to officials at the United Nations and to officials in countries such as France, Russia and China, countries that favored weakening or even ending the sanctions on Iraq.

It is likely that, if the United States had not invaded, the sanctions would have continued to weaken, either officially or effectively, if they were not abandoned entirely.  Once it was possible, it is probable that Saddam Hussein would have tried to rebuild his WMD capability, this time including missiles, too.

But it’s not just what would have happened in Iraq.  Consider some of the second order effects of not invading Iraq:

• Would Libya have given up its nuclear weapons?  (Here.)
• Would we have ever discovered the secret nuclear weapons supply network run by Dr. A. Q. Khan of Pakistan?  And if we wouldn’t, how far would the network have distributed equipment for building nuclear weapons by now?  Who would have nuclear weapons that would not otherwise have gotten them?  (Here and here.)
• If the sanctions on Iraq had collapsed, or effectively become a sieve, what would the effect have been on the efforts to stop Iran from getting a bomb?
• For that matter, if Saddam Hussein had stared us down, what would the effect have been in Afghanistan – or anywhere else in the world?

In other words, we don’t know what would have happened if we had not invaded.  We know what did happen.  It was a lot worse than it should have been, but it has also turned out better than it could have.  We don’t know yet whether the ultimate results of invading are better or worse than what would have happened if we hadn’t invaded.  Perhaps a quote from Zhou Enlai best answers the question of whether we were better off to have invaded or whether it would have been better if we had not done so.  In response to a question about the effects of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai is said to have replied:  “It is too soon to say.”  (And here.)

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* I apologize for not identifying some links here.  There are plenty out there.  I just don’t have the time to look.

**Karl Rove, “My Biggest Mistake in the White House,” The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2010.

*** Daniel Henninger, “If Saddam Had Stayed,” The Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2010.

President Obama Gets Afghanistan Wrong – Again: Part 2

I wanted to follow up on my prior post on the President’s speech last week on Iraq (and Afghanistan) and explain why I think it may be easier to get the full commitment of the American people to achieving success in Afghanistan than the full commitment of President Obama.

Consider these excerpts from the President’s speech:

“Ending this war is not only in Iraq's interest - it is in our own. … Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it is time to turn the page.”
                              * * *
“The pace of our troop reductions [in Afghanistan] will be determined by conditions on the ground, and our support for Afghanistan will endure. But make no mistake: this transition will begin ….”
                              * * *
“Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war …. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people ….
Our most urgent task is to restore our economy ….  This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as President.”

In reading these excerpts, and the rest of the speech, it is pretty clear where President Obama’s commitment – and interest – is.  Certainly, no president wants to go to war.  No president wants to send our troops to fight – and get killed.  But when it becomes necessary to do so, the policy that sends those troops to fight, and the reasons for it, are the most important thing the president is doing, and they require the full commitment of the president. 

We have made a mess of our policy in Afghanistan.  Because of this, the American people have grown tired of Afghanistan.  However, we now have a policy that can succeed.  But for this policy to succeed, we need the support of the American people.  To get that support, the President needs to explain to the American people why success in Afghanistan is important and why this new policy can succeed where what we have done in the past did not.  And this is not something the President can do just once and then forget about it.  He needs to do it over and over again.  He did it for his health care bill, something he cares deeply about.  He needs to do it for Afghanistan, too.  If what we are trying to accomplish in Afghanistan is important enough to send our troops there, it is important enough for the President to spend as much time as necessary to get the support of the American people for our policy there.

The problem is, based on the speech he gave last week, I am not sure President Obama has that level of commitment.  And without his commitment to go out and explain the policy and, in effect, “sell the policy,” again and again, it is going to be hard to get and sustain the commitment of the American people.  The problem is, if the President doesn’t consider Afghanistan important enough to spend his time on it, the American people may not either.

One final comment:  Read this, from near the very end of his speech:

“Those Americans gave their lives [in Iraq] for the values that have lived in the hearts of our people for over two centuries. Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew."

This brings two thoughts to mind.  First, it sounds so much like what British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said about Czechoslovakia just before the Munich conference in 1938:

“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.”

But, more importantly, if President Obama really thinks that our soldiers and Marines in Iraq “never knew” the people they fought for and fought with, then he does not know our soldiers and Marines.  Not only did they fight in Iraq, they helped the Iraqi people.  The whole concept of counterinsurgency operations is to live with and protect the civilian population.  But more than that, what was incredible about the men and women we sent to Iraq was the way they cared about and did things for the Iraqi people.  I have previously mentioned a group called Spirit of America.  It is Americans contributing money and time to send supplies, equipment and other things to the men and women in our Armed Forces in Iraq (and now Afghanistan) so they can, on their own time, help the people of Iraq (and Afghanistan).  To say that the Americans who served in Iraq did not know the people for whom they fought is inaccurate and unjust.  And it is an indication that President Obama doesn’t really know the good our soldiers and Marines are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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PS:  If you can, please contribute to Spirit of America.  By doing so, you can help our troops in Afghanistan help the people of Afghanistan.  Thank you.

Iranian Nukes; Iranian Missiles

A week ago Friday we learned that Iran has been secretly building a second facility for enriching uranium and that this facility is of a size such that it is only good for producing enriched uranium for weapons. It’s too small to produce uranium for civilian power – even though Iran constantly assures the world that its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes.

Then, two days later, Iran test-fired both short range missiles and medium range missiles.

So what do we do? The military option does not sound good – unless our military has some ideas that are better than those we have seen in the media so far. I hope they do, but we can’t count on it. Which leaves diplomacy.

There are those who think diplomacy and sanctions can work. For example, Gerald F. Seib wrote in The Wall Street Journal last month:

"Still, he [Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s finance minister] acknowledged that sanctions sometimes have impact: ‘They worked in Libya,’ which ultimately succumbed to years of economic pressure from the West and pulled the plug on its nuclear program."

I agree there is much to be learned from the Libyan decision, but I am not sure it is effectiveness of sanctions and economic pressure. North Korea and Iran also think there is much to be learned from Libya’s experience. In fact, we can see in the Libyan example an explanation for much of what North Korea and Iran are doing today.

In understanding why Libya decided, in late 2003 and 2004, to voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons, you have to look at what was happening at time. There had been negotiations and sanctions before, but they hadn’t worked. Then something happened in 2003 which changed Libya’s calculations: the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein. As Judith Miller wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

"On Dec. 16, 2003, three days after Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole near Tikrit, Robert G. Joseph, who headed counterproliferation on the White House National Security Council, flew to London for a secret meeting with his British and Libyan counterparts to discuss how and when Libya would announce the abandonment of its weapons of mass destruction."*

The United States invaded Iraq because we (and the rest of the world) thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Libya knew it had WMD. According to Colonel Gadhafi’s son, his father abandoned his WMD because he had to. "‘Overnight we found ourselves in a different world,’ said Saif, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks. ‘So Libya had to redesign its policies to cope with these new realities.’"**

Ms. Miller continues:

"Mr. [Ma’atouq Mohamed] Ma’atouq [head of Libya’s secret nuclear program] confirmed Saif’s assertion that Libya had decided to renounce the nuclear and WMD programs, after months of debate within Col Gadhafi’s inner circle. He said that Libyan experts had advised Col. Gadhafi that the programs no longer served Libyan national interests. ‘We had discussed many options for securing our state,’ Mr. Ma'atouq recounted. ‘I’m an engineer, a practical man. And I said: Let’s assume we have these weapons. What would we do with them? Who is the target? Who would we use them against? The U.S.? We had no delivery system. Yes, nuclear weapons are a deterrent, but it’s better to have nothing at all than a deterrent without a means of delivery."**

In other words, because Libya had no means of delivering (i.e., effectively using) his nuclear weapons, Colonel Gadhafi decided it was more dangerous to have them than to get rid of them.

That is the lesson that North Korea and Iran have learned from Libya’s decision to give up its WMD; i.e., not that you are better off giving up your nuclear weapons, but that if you are going to have them, you have to have a way to deliver them, too. And that is why Iran’s and North Korea’s missile programs are just as dangerous as their nuclear weapons programs. They are not going to make Colonel Gadhafi’s mistake of having nuclear weapons and not having a way to use them.

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* Judith Miller, "Gadhafi's Leap of Faith," The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2006.

** Judith Miller, "How Gadhafi' Lost His Groove," The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2006.

Update (10/3/09 4:35 p.m.): Corrected a typo.

Two Stories For the Fourth of July

First, Tom Brokaw has talked a lot about "the Greatest Generation," those Americans who won World War II and then helped rebuild the world afterwards. At times his emphasis on that time and those people make it seem like we don’t have people like that anymore. Which is wrong. I am not normally a fan of Karl Rove (for reasons I do not need to go into here), but please read his column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (see here) about a family of Americans, a father, a mother and two sons, who are as great as any Americans of any time.

Second, when we were in Berlin in May, I went to the Allied Museum. This is a relatively new museum. It was opened in 1998 on what I believe is part of an old American base in Berlin. The museum tells the story of the American, British and French forces in Berlin from 1945 to 1994, when they were finally able to leave.

Obviously, the museum talked of the Berlin Airlift. In June of 1948, the Soviets blocked all land and sea access to West Berlin. President Truman did not want to, effectively, give Berlin to the Soviets, but he did not want to risk war by using troops to force open the transit routes. So we decided to supply Berlin by air. Nobody knew if it could be done, but we tried. Things started slowly, but eventually we found we could supply Berlin by air. Everything was delivered by air. All kinds of food and other supplies. Even coal was loaded into airplanes and flown to Berlin to generate electricity for the city. It was a fantastic success from a logistical point of view. But it was more than that.

When one of the American pilots met some German children in Berlin, he noticed how well-behaved they were, how they did not beg for candy (as children he had met elsewhere in Europe had done). So he promised the children that the next time he flew into Berlin, he would wiggle his wings and then drop chocolate bars from his airplane. He went back to his base and made little parachutes to hold the candy when he dropped it from his plane. Other pilots started doing it, too. They became known as the "candy bombers," and they created lots of friends for the Americans in Berlin.*

It was, and is, a great story of American servicemen (and servicewomen) doing good overseas. Last year Andrei Cherny wrote a book called The Candy Bombers. The author said he was motivated to write the book while working for the John Kerry campaign in 2004 and by what he saw happening at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the issue of Guantanamo Bay, "[I]t seemed to me the America that I and so many others had grown up believing in was somehow absent from the world scene."

But is that really true? Is that America gone or is it that we just don’t hear about it or read about it. When Gail Halverson dropped his chocolate bars, people knew about it. Halverson himself was sent on publicity tours to talk abut it.

The fact is these kinds of things are happening today. It is just that we do not see much about them in the newspapers and other media. I do not know if it is the fault of the media for not reporting it (bad news seems to get more emphasis than good) or the fault of our Armed Forces and administrations for not telling us about them (public relations did not always seem a priority for the Bush administration). For whatever reason, stories of the good our soldiers are doing are not easy to find. But they are doing great things, and we should know about them. One source that I know about is the Spirit of America website. (See here.) Go to this website and read about the things our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere, are doing in their spare time to help the people of these countries. And as you read about what our troops are doing, please consider what we can do to help our servicemen and women help these people. By contributing just a little money, we do our part, too. If you can, please do so. Consider it a birthday present for the United States.

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* And the friendship lasted. In 2002, when the Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, during the Opening Ceremonies the German team was led into the stadium by Gail Halverson, the first "candy bomber".

"The Least of My Problems … Iraq"

I realize I am late in commenting on this, but I just saw this quote when I was reading my new issue of The Economist. In an interview with "60 Minutes" which I think was broadcast on March 24, President Obama said this:

"[I]f you had said … a year ago that the least of my problems would be Iraq, which is still a pretty serious problem, I don't think anybody would have believed it."

Hmm. Who would have thought that? Well, how about Senator John McCain – and Senator Joe Lieberman – and lots of our soldiers and Marines on duty in Iraq – and most of the people who voted against Barack Obama last November. Because they knew what then-Senator Obama wasn’t willing to admit, and probably didn’t even take the time to try to figure out: that the "surge," i.e., the change to a counterinsurgency strategy and an increase in the number of troops, was actually working.

A Few More Thoughts on Afghanistan

In Sunday’s Washington Post, Jim Hoagland gave what may be a preview of President Obama’s policy on Afghanistan, which is to be rolled out (to use Mr. Hoagland’s phrase) starting this week. Let me comment on several of the things Mr. Hoagland said. (The excerpts from Mr. Hoagland’s article are indented.)

"According to U.S. and foreign officials, Petraeus – the regional commander for the Afghan and Iraqi theaters – persuaded the president last month that sending 17,000 new soldiers to Afghanistan will enable U.S. and allied commanders to reduce their reliance on the airstrikes and special forces' raids that have inflicted growing civilian casualties and provoked bitter outbursts from President Hamid Karzai."

This is an important point, and I am glad President Obama agreed to it. Airstrikes and special forces’ raids can kill terrorist leaders, but they also wind up killing lots of innocent civilians, too. They often create more enemies than they kill. With more troops on the ground, we can limit our reliance on airstrikes and raids. One other thing: I don’t care about President Hamid Karzai’s complaints as much I do the people of Afghanistan. Fewer of these strikes and raids will help us convince the Afghanis we are there to protect them, not kill them as collateral damage.

"Petraeus would also apply in Afghanistan another feature of the surge strategy that he championed in Iraq's Anbar province. U.S. intelligence estimates that only 5 percent of the Taliban are ‘hard core’ ideologues sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and Petraeus wants a significant outreach by provincial Afghan officials and the U.S. officers who work with them to the ‘recoverable’ Taliban."

Petraeus has an excellent idea here. One caution, though: David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and adviser to General Petraeus in Iraq, notes that "[i]f the Taliban sees that we’re negotiating for a stay of execution or to stave off defeat, that’s going to harden their resolve." In Iraq, President Bush made it clear we were not merely trying to stave off defeat. Whether President Obama’s administration – and his party – will convey a similar message of commitment in Afghanistan is unclear.

"The general acknowledges the great differences between the two countries. But his recent success in Iraq seems to drive his approach in Afghanistan. Holbrooke brings a different perspective, having experienced success in the Balkans but also having absorbed as a young diplomat the failure of pacification and counterinsurgency in Vietnam."

Mr. Hoagland both underestimates General Petraeus and is wrong when he talks about the failure of counterinsurgency in Vietnam. During our first three to four years in Vietnam (from 1965 to 1968), we did not try counterinsurgency. We used General William Westmoreland’s big unit/"search and destroy"/body count strategy. It was only when General Creighton Abrams took over in 1968 that we started to employ a proper counterinsurgency strategy. Unfortunately, by the time General Abrams’ "One War" strategy started to have some success, we were already on the way out and the strategy did not have time to succeed.*

If Richard Holbrooke thinks pacification and counterinsurgency "failed" in Vietnam, as opposed to not succeeding because the United States was leaving no matter what, then it is Mr. Holbrooke who has not absorbed the complicated history of our time in Vietnam. General Petraeus did his doctoral dissertation on the lessons of Vietnam. He understands both sides of the Vietnam experience, both where we had success and where we failed.

"All through the Afghan strategic review the ghosts of Vietnam have been tugging at the sleeves of some of the president's advisers, while others have focused on the (still fragile) stabilization of Iraq."

"[T]he ghosts of Vietnam" are truly President Obama’s Achilles heel when it comes to Afghanistan. Too many Democrats see Vietnam whenever they look at the possibility of sending our military overseas. We have gotten smarter since then. It took a while, but we have learned the lessons of Vietnam, and we can, if we want to, avoid the mistakes of Vietnam.

"The 'minimalist' camp, which includes Vice President Biden and the review's coordinator, Bruce Riedel, argued for modest goals -- essentially an Afghanistan that is not a base for international terrorism."

As John McCain’s and Joe Lieberman said in their article in The Washington Post last Thursday (and as I said here), the minimalist approach will not work – because the Afghanis won’t help us if we are not going to help protect them. You beat insurgencies with intelligence. You get intelligence from people. People will give you intelligence if you make a credible commitment to be there to protect them. The problem is too many of the veterans of the anti-Vietnam war left seem unwilling to make such a commitment.

"Holbrooke seems to have been in the middle. …

The arguments have been serious and intense enough for Obama to have delayed a decision beyond his original mid-March deadline …. When the strategy emerges, it is likely to be a synthesis that moves everyone toward a middle ground. That is the other thing about smart operators: They also know when they have to bridge differences and get to work."

If Mr. Hoagland is saying that President Obama is trying to come down in the middle, then we are in trouble. An approach of "some of this, some of that" may work in a Chinese restaurant, but it is not what we need in Afghanistan. President Obama needs to go with what will work on the ground in Afghanistan, not try to "synthesize" some middle ground designed mostly to make people in Washington happy.

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* For more discussion on General Westmoreland’s strategy in Vietnam versus General Abrams’, see here and other posts in the category "Vietnam".

"Obama Sets Iraq Deadline"

According to today’s Chicago Tribune*:

"Addressing one of his primary campaign pledges, the president on Friday announced a compromise 18-month timetable for the withdrawal of a majority of troops from Iraq. Obama’s plan was surprisingly praised by former rival John McCain, but war critics questioned this proposal to leave behind a ‘transitional force’ of up to 55,000 troops."

Two comments: First, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq now has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama’s proposal of two years ago to withdraw our troops in 16 months starting then. Back then he wanted to pull out while we were losing and at a time when a withdrawal would have had catastrophic results for the people of Iraq and the reputation and credibility of the United States.

Second, it is not at all "surprising" that John McCain would support this new plan. We have won the war in Iraq. The insurgency has been beaten. Obviously, there is some work that needs to be done to maintain the victory. We need to do what we can to make sure the insurgents don’t make a comeback like we did when General Petraeus took over in early 2007. But the troops we will have in Iraq over the next 18 months and beyond should be enough to do the job.

The fact of the matter is there was just barely enough time left in George W. Bush’s term, and enough other events in Iraq went our way, that General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy was able to succeed in Iraq before Barack Obama became president. We were just lucky we didn’t do what Barack Obama wanted to do two years ago. That would have been a disaster.

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* I could not find a link for this quotation on chicagotribune.com. It is on the front page of the print edition.

Iraq: The "Surge" Was Not an Increase In Troops

David Ignatius’s article on "[Ryan] Crocker’s Heroic Service" and Peter Beinart’s op-ed piece, "Admit It: The Surge Worked," both need a comment. Both articles talk about how "the surge" worked in Iraq, about how Bush’s decision "to add more troops"/"to increase America’s troop presence" was the right thing to do.

But those comments are misleading. What made the difference in Iraq was not the increase in the number of troops; it was the change to a counterinsurgency strategy led by General David Petraeus. If we had merely increased the number of troops while continuing to follow the strategy of we had been following, of staying on big bases while trying to train the Iraqi forces, making rather clumsy strikes at terrorists, and ignoring the security of the local population, we would have lost.

We won (and the Iraqi people won) because we changed strategies. We put population security first and implemented a proper counterinsurgency strategy. We needed more troops to implement the counterinsurgency strategy, but it was the strategy that made the difference, not the number of troops.

This is important for a couple reasons. First, knowing why we won in Iraq can help new policymakers know what they need to do to keep the victory.

Second, and more importantly, it helps us know what to do in Afghanistan. Understanding what worked in Iraq helps us understand that doing better in Afghanistan is not just a matter of sending more troops. The first thing we have to do is make sure we have the right strategy. Then we need to make sure we have enough troops to implement the correct strategy.

We have two things going for us in Afghanistan. First, as new chief of CentCom (i.e., Central Command), General Petraeus has responsibility for Afghanistan. Second, for reasons I do not entirely understand (some perhaps principled and many probably political), President-elect Obama and other Democrats have been calling Afghanistan the good war, the war we should have been fighting. Now they can’t abandon Afghanistan. They need to succeed in the war that Bush was losing. And if they listen to General Petraeus, they just might do it.

Two Comments on the Presidential Debate Last Night

First, in response to a question on the lessons of Iraq, Barack Obama said this: "Now six years ago, I stood up and opposed this war at a time when it was politically risky to do so …." That is not true. It was not politically risky for Senator Obama to oppose the war in Iraq in 2002 when state Senator Obama was running for re-election to the Illinois Senate from the Hyde Park area of Chicago. Given the political leanings of that district, it would have been politically risky to support the invasion of Iraq. Senator Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq at that time in that district is actually just another example of Senator Obama’s positions fitting the district he is running in at the time.

Second, in response to a question about what parts of his programs he might have to give up because of the economic crisis, Senator Obama talked about things he would cut:

"We right now give $15 billion every year as subsidies to private insurers under the Medicare system. Doesn't work any better through the private insurers. They just skim off $15 billion. That was a give away and part of the reason is because lobbyists are able to shape how Medicare works.

They did it on the Medicaid prescription drug bill …."

The first part of the quotation is the standard Democratic policy that we have to change the part of Medicare that allows private insurers to provide seniors with choices for the medical coverage. Democrats don’t like private involvement in Medicare. It’s against what they believe in; they want the government to run it.

I think the second part probably relates to the new Medicare Part D drug plan that was passed in 2003 even though the transcript says "Medicaid". This is even more troubling because, as I have mentioned before, the really good thing about Part D is that it shows how a government health program can, by involving private companies that give seniors real choices, actually provide a program that people like and that comes in under budget. If Senator Obama does not like this, then that is a worry.