Colbert - and Susan Lucci! - on Petraeus affair

Leave it to Colbert to hit just the right tone with his send-up of this weird "love pentagon:"

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

But what I want to know -- and what I always wondered about characters in soaps -- is how the heck these people find so much time during the day to engage in so much personal nonsense?  You know, the doctor who's never seeing patients or filling out paperwork, the policeman who's never solving any crimes, the executive who is never busy at his desk and lets any old visitor pop into his office on the spur of the moment.... That's what I always found the most unreal about soap operas, odd as that may be.

But apparently, it's not so far-fetched.  For example, the general commanding U.S. troops risking their lives in Afghanistan apparently has all kinds of time to exchange thousands of e-mails with some ditzy military groupie in Tampa and even worry about her even ditzier twin sister.  

I dunno, I guess I ought to spend more time at work having it out with the people in my personal life, just like all these rich and powerful people on TV....

Absurd, terrifying history of counter-insurgencies

This is a fascinating brief history (complete with embedded film clips) of the absurd and terrifying results of Western "counter-insurgency" warfare, from Algiers to Vietnam to Iraq.

Personally I was shocked to learn that Gen. David "Surge" Petraeus found his inspiration in 2006 in none other than French military expert David Galula who advised the RAND Corp. and the U.S. military how to fight the Viet Cong.  Said Galula:

"Revolutionary warfare requires a revolutionary approach on both sides in the struggle.  Whereas in ordinary war the objective is to destroy the enemy and occupy his territory, the guerrilla's aim is to control the population.

"This, therefore, must be the aim of the counter-guerrilla as well."

HOWEVER,

"One basic difference between insurgency and counterinsurgency is that the insurgent starts out with nothing but a cause and grows to strength, while counterinsurgent often starts with everything but a cause and gradually declines in strength to the point of weakness."

And we all know how well Vietnam went for the U.S.

The point is that counter-insurgency, without any real cultural understanding of the native people, in the end always resorts to indiscriminate torture and killing.  First we westerners train our local "allies" in new, aggressive guerrilla-like tactics; then our "allies" lead us, their "masters," by the nose to wreak havoc on their personal enemies and/or rival sects and tribes, until the violence becomes criminal, absurd, and seemingly indiscriminate.  We kid ourselves into thinking we can sort the good guys from the bad.

How To Kill A Rational Peasant

By Adam Curtis 

June 16, 2012 | BBC

URL:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/06/how_to_kill_a_rational_peasant.html

Re: The real reasons behind improvement in Iraq

Too bad Robinson doesn't include herself among the "grown-ups" who need to discuss this decision; she ends the op-ed without giving any concrete advice, despite her extensive 10 months of experience in Iraq.  She does advocate some number of troops between 0 and 100,000 to remain in Iraq, for some unspecified period of time.  Wow, brilliant.  That's just the kind of "risk nothing" policy prescription that lands you a comfortable fellowship at conservative Johns Hopkins U. 

Sounds to me like the Sunnis and Maliki did things that were in their interest: The Sunnis gladly took U.S. cash in exchange for rooting out al Qaeda (which they would have done anyway); and Prime Minister Maliki gladly borrowed U.S. muscle to help cow his rival, Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army (whom he would have had to take on anyway).  We couldn't really "take advantage" of the competition between Maliki and Sadr, because Maliki knew that we wouldn't support Sadr, what with his close ties to Iran.  So Maliki was our only alternative, and he knew it.  That's not "competition" or playing both sides off one another, as Robinson claims, that's just plain choosing sides (Maliki's) in an internecine power struggle.  Let's hope Maliki was worth it.

That said, bribing people who can be bribed is SOP in counter-insurgency warfare.  It's cheaper and less bloody than killing them.  Again, let's hope we bribed the right people, and that they'll stay bought and not to shoot us in the back as we leave.

Finally, just because Petraeus and the U.S. army were proximate to these events, doesn't mean that they caused them.  I sense in Robinson another journalistic victim of "Embed Syndrome," who got starstruck by all her access to Petraeus himself.   

The upshot of this op-ed is just what every Administration mouthpiece has been saying for the past 5 years: Stay the course in Iraq, for some unknown period of time, at some undefined level of troops.  McCain couldn't have put it any better himself. 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 2:46 PM
Subject: Fw: the first disastrous steps taken by the U.S. occupation authority led by L. Paul Bremer -- disbanding Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and the old regime's security services -- had helped create the Sunni insurgency.
To:

 

 

How Petraeus Changed the Course in Iraq

 

By Linda Robinson

September 14, 2008 | Washington Post

 

Iraq still divides Democrats and Republicans like no other issue, as the campaign rhetoric of both parties makes abundantly clear. Liberals and conservatives can now more or less agree that Iraq is a much, much safer country than it was 18 months ago. But each side is peddling its own story about Iraq's extraordinary turnaround -- and both are wrong.

 

Many conservatives believe that the 2007 "surge" in U.S. troop levels directly produced the decline in Iraqi violence. Meanwhile, liberals argue that Iraq's warring Shiites and Sunnis spontaneously decided -- for their own internal reasons, unrelated to the surge -- to stop fighting. As is so often true of Washington debates, these arguments bear little relation to the reality of how Iraq actually pulled out of its death spiral, which is far more interesting than either partisan yarn. There was no single silver bullet, but rather a multifaceted strategy crafted and carried out by those in Baghdad -- not, despite recent claims, in Washington.

 

I came to this conclusion after reporting in Iraq for a total of 10 months since 2003 and after extensive interviews with Iraqi and U.S. leaders, as well as with troops in the most violent neighborhoods of greater Baghdad, the epicenter of the conflict. My biggest question was my simplest: How did Gen. David H. Petraeus do it?

 

My answer? Bottom line, for the first time since the war began, a U.S. leader decided to address the political motivations of the Iraqi combatants. Petraeus convened a study group that shrewdly analyzed the raging sectarian conflict, then came up with what he called "the Anaconda strategy" to address the underlying dynamic.

 

 

Petraeus and his diplomatic partner, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, realized that the first disastrous steps taken by the U.S. occupation authority led by L. Paul Bremer -- disbanding Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and the old regime's security services -- had helped create the Sunni insurgency. They produced a critical mass of angry men worried that the Sunnis who had run the old Iraq would wind up on the bottom in the new one. Those fears were soon realized: Bremer's occupation government pushed for a sequence of poorly planned elections that wound up entrenching the power of a Shiite-dominated coalition, which began a "sectarian cleansing" campaign against Iraq's minority Sunnis -- and tilted the country into a full-on civil war.

 

While policymakers back in Washington continued to be duped by sectarian-minded Shiite politicians, Petraeus and Crocker set about using all available levers -- including thinking about Iraqi politics -- to rectify the earlier, catastrophic U.S. blunders.

 

The extra surge brigades certainly helped, but the number of U.S. troops was far less important than the new ways in which they were used. The most important new tactical move still gets scant Beltway attention: Petraeus's initiative to reach out to the Sunni insurgency and its base. "We cannot kill our way to victory," he said.

 

On June 2, 2007, Petraeus gathered his commanders and told them to engage with influential Sunnis and insurgents and persuade them to stop fighting. "Tribal engagement and local reconciliation work!" he said. "Encourage it!"

 

The policy was carried out on the battalion level, using troops deployed in U.S. outposts and in joint security stations alongside freshly trained Iraqi forces. "Don't let our bureaucracy stop you, and don't let the Iraqi government stop you," Petraeus urged his young lieutenant colonels, whom he often invited to join him for five-mile fitness -- and advice-dispensing -- runs around Camp Victory, the main U.S. base.

 

He was right to turn to his battalion commanders. Baghdad was being engulfed in growing mayhem: ever-larger car bombs, lethal copper projectiles, homemade explosives packed into sewer pipes that burned U.S. soldiers alive. But the U.S. troops persisted. Over the summer of 2007, the Sunnis responded en masse to the new approach: By September, according to U.S. officials and my own reporting, 15,000 Sunnis had signed up to become checkpoint guards and neighborhood watchmen, paid and monitored by the U.S. battalions that were being so carefully coached by Petraeus. The Shiite government was not amused; the last thing it wanted was its former Sunni foes back inside the fold. Still, by year's end, 70,000 Sunnis -- comprising the vast majority of the insurgents and their support base -- had joined the new U.S.-backed effort. This policy -- battled by bureaucrats both in Baghdad and inside the Beltway -- changed the tide of the war.

 

As the Sunni insurgents switched sides, they passed vital intelligence to their U.S. partners and paymasters, which enabled Petraeus's forces to target Sunni holdouts, including diehards affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq. U.S. soldiers also employed new techniques to control the Iraqi population and provide for its safety and to identify fighters hidden among the civilians. For the first time since the war began in 2003, a shareable, computerized biometric registry of military-age males was created. This led to the detention of fewer innocents and more bad guys. Meanwhile, car bombings fell off dramatically after U.S. forces erected concrete barrier walls along sectarian fault lines, including the markets that had been the scenes of some of the ghastliest atrocities.

 

Why were so many Sunnis -- insurgents and civilians alike -- ready to respond to the U.S. overture? Because they were getting desperate and saw Petraeus's outstretched hand as their best chance of surviving a campaign of sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing led by the Shiites and fueled by neighboring Iran. The secular Sunnis' alliance with the jihadist insurgents had always been an uneasy marriage of convenience, and it broke up when Petraeus made a better offer.

 

Another major change over the past 18 months is also poorly understood: the decision of the Mahdi Army, the radical Shiite militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, to largely stop fighting. Sadr, a young firebrand Islamist cleric, raised a militia of poor youths to take on U.S. troops, even as he backed his fellow Shiite, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, through political channels. Then last August, Sadr abruptly declared a ceasefire.

 

That move has been widely misinterpreted as a spontaneous, unilateral gesture; in fact, it came after months of military and political pressure. Iraqi special operations forces, backed by elite U.S. combat advisers, conducted near-nightly raids against the most extreme elements of the Mahdi Army. In March 2007, according to Petraeus's staff, the special ops units captured Qais Khazali, a member of the radical Lebanese militia Hezbollah and a Sadrist militia leader. Khazali, U.S. military officials said, provided details of extensive Iranian assistance to Khazali's henchmen. This information, together with two assassinations of provincial governors by Sadrist forces, rattled Maliki -- and began to turn him against Sadr, a fellow Shiite who had helped put the prime minister in office.

 

The final straw came on Aug. 27, when Sadr's militiamen attacked guards at the main Shiite shrine in Karbala as a million worshipers arrived in the city to mark a holy day. An apoplectic Maliki rushed to Karbala, and the resulting confrontation led Sadr (then in Iran) to back down and issue his ceasefire declaration. Maliki then launched an offensive in Basra this spring to break Sadrists' control of the city, the port and oil pumping station. The wedge between Maliki and Sadr widened when massive arms caches of recent Iranian manufacture were discovered, despite Iran's 2007 pledge to desist stoking Iraq's nascent civil war.

 

 

That said, the intra-Shiite competition for power will persist for years; the trick is to channel it into politics, not violence -- and to continue to make use of the competition between Maliki and Sadr.

 

Iranian influence in Iraq is also destined to continue, but it's a double-edged sword. Iraqi Shiite groups are wary of appearing to be Iranian puppets, which would hamstring their popularity with Iraqis. Nor do many Iraqi Shiites fancy a Tehran-style theocracy. As Sadr's militia has loosened its control over many Shiite neighborhoods, ordinary Shiites have sighed with relief, glad to be rid of the thuggish behavior and the religious strictures imposed by some militia leaders.

 

Another key factor in Iraq's turnaround has been Petraeus's willingness to use his leverage with Iraqi leaders. Behind closed doors, the U.S. commander has frequently gone to the mat with Maliki as part of a "good cop, bad cop" routine that he and the unflappable Crocker have perfected. The veteran ambassador provided diplomatic sangfroid and insight into the region's historical animosities; Petraeus provided the raw muscle to maneuver the Iraqi government into making concessions.

 

Petraeus waded deeper into the political mire than most other U.S. generals would have. In one of my interviews with him last year, he confessed to me that he had shown the "full range of emotions" and had even feigned anger in order to move Maliki away from sectarianism. On his first tour in Iraq, in Mosul, the general had learned that it was sometimes necessary to bang tables and twist arms.

 

Getting basic services to Sunni areas was one key effort that required constant browbeating. When Petraeus was told that an Iraqi ministry official had refused to visit Dora, one of many Sunni regions still without electricity, trash removal and other basic services, I heard him bark, "Tell him if he wants a blue badge for the Green Zone, he'd better get down here." Petraeus also pushed the Iraqi parliament to pass de-Baathification reforms and other crucial legislation earlier this year. And not least, the general repeatedly bucked pressure from his civilian and military superiors at the Pentagon to declare "Mission Accomplished" before he felt that it was.

 

Petraeus's willingness to grapple with Iraqi politics made all the difference. His replacements' tasks will be more than ever political, not military. The former Sunni insurgency hasn't yet been woven into the political, economic and security life of the country, and the extraordinary success of the past 18 months is likely to unravel if Petraeus's and Crocker's successors -- as well as the next U.S. president -- do not finish that crucial undertaking.

 

No, the Iraqis can't finish the job on their own now; at the same time, no, we don't need 100,000 U.S. troops to stay in Iraq and do it for them. It would be heartening if we could understand the real record of Iraq's turnaround -- and talk about its future like grown-ups.

 

lrobin43@jhu.edu

Gen. R. Cody (Ret.): Iraq is breaking our Army

Military Conflict
By Steve Coll
April 14, 2008 | NewYorker.com

General Richard A. Cody graduated from West Point in 1972, flew helicopters, ascended to command the storied 101st Airborne Division, and then, toward the end of his career, settled into management; now, at fifty-seven, he wears four stars as the Army Vice-Chief of Staff. This summer, he will retire from military service.

In 2004, in a little-noted speech, Cody described the Army's efforts to adapt to its new commitments. (It was attempting to fight terrorism, quell the Taliban, invade and pacify Iraq, and, at the same time, prepare for future strategic challenges, whether in China or Korea or Africa.) The endeavor was, Cody said, like "building an airplane in flight."

Last week, the General appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee and testified that this method of engineering has failed. "Today's Army is out of balance," Cody said. He continued:

The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply, and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies. . . . Soldiers, families, support systems and equipment are stretched and stressed. . . . Overall, our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it. If unaddressed, this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the all-volunteer force and degrades the Army's ability to make a timely response to other contingencies.

In 2006, the Army granted eight thousand three hundred and thirty "moral waivers" to new recruits, meaning that it had accepted that number of volunteers with past criminal charges or convictions. The percentage of high-school graduates willing to serve is falling sharply from year to year; so are the aptitude-exam scores of new enlistees. To persuade soldiers and young officers to reënlist after overlong combat tours, the Army's spending on retention bonuses increased almost ninefold from 2003 to 2006.

In normal times, when an active four-star general implies in public that the Army is under such strain that it might flounder if an unexpected war broke out, or might require a draft to muster adequate troop levels, he could expect to provoke concern and comment from, say, the President of the United States. Some time ago, however, George W. Bush absolved himself of responsibility for his Iraq policy and its consequences by turning the war over to General David H. Petraeus, Cody's four-star peer, and the champion of the "surge" policy, who will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week.

Petraeus, too, is a loyal Army man, but he has distinctive views about military doctrine; he has long advocated a change in orientation by the Army, away from preparations for formal warfare between governments and toward the challenges of counter-insurgency and nation building. ("Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife" is the title of a book co-written by one of Petraeus's advisers, Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl.) To buy time in Iraq, Petraeus has lately argued within the Pentagon that the Army must buck up and accommodate his need for heavy troop deployments, despite the strains they are creating, and he has publicly fostered an unedifying debate about how to most accurately assess failure and success in Iraq, as if such an opaque and intractable civil conflict could be measured scientifically, like monetary supply or atmospheric pressure.

There is, of course, empirical evidence of declining violence in Iraq, which has coincided with Petraeus's command. The additional troops he requested have certainly been a factor, but not even Petraeus can say how much of one. At best, during the past year he has helped to piece together a stalemate of heavily armed, bloodstained, conspiracy-minded, ambiguously motivated Iraqi militias. Nobody knows how long this gridlock will hold.

A war born in spin has now reached its Lewis Carroll period. ("Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.") Last week, it proved necessary for the Bush Administration to claim that an obvious failure—Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's ill-prepared raid on rival Shiite gangs in Basra, which was aborted after mass desertions within Maliki's own ranks—was actually a success in disguise, because it demonstrated the Iraqi government's independence of mind.

In this environment, it is perhaps unsurprising that General Cody's plainspoken, valedictory dissent about the Army's health attracted little attention. His testimony marked a rare public surfacing of the contentious debates at the Pentagon over the strategic costs of the surge. These debates involve overlapping disagreements about doctrine (particularly the importance of counter-insurgency), global priorities (Iraq versus Afghanistan, for instance), and resources. At their core, however, lies Cody's essential observation: the Army is running on fumes, but Petraeus and his fellow surge advocates are driving flat out in Iraq, with no destination in sight. It hardly matters whether Petraeus would recommend keeping a hundred and thirty thousand or more combat troops in Iraq for a hundred years, or only ten. Neither scenario is plausible—at least, not without a draft or a radical change in incentives for volunteers.

Flag officers in the Bush Administration's military have learned that they can be marginalized or retired if they speak out too boldly. The Administration does not romanticize the role of the loyal opposition. Last month, Admiral William J. Fallon, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, announced his early retirement, under pressure from the White House, after he argued privately for a faster drawdown from Iraq, to bolster efforts in Afghanistan and to restore a more balanced global military posture. Publicly, Fallon also described the "drumbeat of conflict" against Iran as "not helpful."

The suppression of professional military dissent helped to create the disaster in Iraq; now it is depriving American voters of an election-year debate about the defense issues that matter most. These include the nature and the location of the country's global adversaries and interests, the challenge of a revitalizing Al Qaeda in Pakistan, the conundrum of Iran, the failing health of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and, to address all this, the need for a sustainable strategy that restores the Army's vitality and makes rational use of America's finite military resources. To implement such a strategy, it would not be necessary to rashly abandon Iraq to its fate, but it would be essential, at a minimum, to reduce American troop levels to well below a hundred thousand as soon as possible. In the long run, success or failure for the United States in Iraq will not hinge on who wins the argument about the surge; it will depend on whether it proves possible to change the subject.

'Superman' approach to U.S. foreign policy

What this op-ed doesn't even touch on is that America has the luxury of this either-or debate just as long as it remains militarily and economically unassailable. What happens if America goes into a long economic decline, with huge national debt? (Our national debt is now over $9 trillion; the FY 2008 budget is about $3 trillion; and 9 percent of the FY 2008 budget will go toward interest payments on America's national debt -- about $870 for every U.S. citizen). Will we Americans choose to sacrifice our schools, our infrastructure, our health, and our children's future to continue funding a military that outspends every other country on earth, combined?

So, Ezra Klein's op-ed just scratches the surface.

What none of our leaders, with the possible exception of Obama, seems to realize is that we are almost right back to where we were on the eve of victory in WWII. It was a world where the great powers all recognized that balance-of-power equations were fundamentally imbalanced; where competing economic-military interests led inevitably to international conflict.

The Cold War started before WWII was even over. Even before victory was declared, Germany and Eastern Europe were already being carved up by the Allies and the Soviet Union. But the Cold War only forestalled the above-mentioned debate.

The Cold War has been over for 18 years, yet we are still slow to realize that the world hasn't really changed since 1945. America is ascendant, but not omnipotent. Competing national interests and values sometimes coalesce, but more often than not, lead to conflict.

American leadership -- while we've still got it -- must be be focused on building a rules-based and law-abiding world. We can't count on our military superiority to trump all other competing nations and interests forever, especially in a world where the U.S. economy is in decline, and resurgent countries like Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Iran hold the keys to the resources upon which we're all dependent.

Therefore, while it can, it is in America's own interest to use its great power -- which will decline, just as all great powers in history saw their power inevitably decline -- to build a more fundamentally just, transparent, democratic, and lawful international system.

I don't know exactly what that system would look like. But I imagine that it would mean, in part, forsaking institutions like NATO and the World Bank/IMF in favor of more inclusive, transparent, and democratic institutions like the UN. The UN is not perfect, but America has the power to improve the UN if it wants to.

Sen. McCain talks about building a "League of Democracies" to compete with the UN. This would be completely counter-productive and provocative, especially if such a league would be viewed as just another vehicle for U.S. influence under the guise of multi-national cooperation. But, to some extent, McCain's sentiments are correct: the UN should find ways to hold its members accountable for aggression, and undermining the values of democracy, human rights, and transparency. The US has the power and -- with a different Administration -- perhaps enough remaining moral credibility to lead this effort.

Achieving this vision of a more just, peaceful, democratic, and transparent world through collective submission to international laws and norms, would require nothing short of a revolution in international relations. It would require each nation to give up a measure of its precious sovereignty. It would require new or greatly strengthened international institutions like the UN and its International Court of Justice (aka World Court) to judge infractions and punish wrongdoers. Such a vision could not be realized in one U.S. presidential administration, or even a generation. But America should have the foresight to begin the hard work toward realizing this vision now. We cannot wait. If we miss this moment, history may pass us by, and our children and grand-children may lament that the less-than-morally-perfect Chinas and Russias of the world are dictating world affairs, not us.

A Superman Approach to Foreign Policy
By Ezra Klein
April 11, 2008 | American Prospect

Round and round the rhetoric went yesterday. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were, if not masterful in their obfuscation, perfectly adequate. Success was never defined, and thus the conditions for withdrawal were never articulated. A healthier insurgency, we were told, required the presence of our troops to beat it back, and a weakened insurgency required the presence of our troops to press the advantage. Heads we stay in Iraq; tails we never leave.

And either way, we never talk about anything else. Aside from the odd, and very occasional, dip into arguments like whether we'll negotiate with Iran or attend the 2008 Summer Olympics, Iraq exerts near total domination over the foreign-policy discussion. Its presence in the election has actually served to obscure real disagreement over foreign-policy philosophies. Everyone who wants to bring the war to a close is declared a liberal. Those who want to see it continued are considered conservatives. That, however, is a misleadingly narrow space for discussion. There's a difference between being pro-war, anti-war, anti-this particular war, and anti-this kind of preventive war. Opposing our continued presence in a hellish quagmire, in other words, is different than actually articulating your philosophy on the use of force and the point of foreign policy.

Which is why Matthew Yglesias' new book Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats is actually that rarest of election-year tomes: A useful intervention into the debate. (Full disclosure: Yglesias is a contributor to this site and a friend of mine.) Rather than simply re-litigating the argument over the Iraq War, Yglesias situates the war, and the debate that led to the invasion, in the context of longer-running arguments about the proper direction of U.S. foreign policy. In particular, he laments the relative abandonment of the vision liberals have held dear since World War II -- that of a rules-based international order in which America sacrifices a certain amount of autonomy in order to gain a greater measure of legitimacy, and works mightily to create, preserve, and strengthen international institutions that let other countries do the same. Those who would promote liberal values, in other words, need also submit to them. This means, at times, restraining American power and even accepting that our agenda can be impeded by the intransigence of our allies and, occasionally, our adversaries. But better we endure smaller setbacks than revisit the brutal struggle for power that defined world affairs in the pre-internationalist period. Better those bureaucratic struggles than a return to what came before.

This vision underpinned the foreign-policy decisions of post-World War II presidents, but it was rarely articulated. The rhetoric of international affairs has long had a militaristic and even self-consciously heroic character. The "Greatest Generation," after all, is remembered for bravely saving the world from the menace of Hitler, not for the U.N. and Bretton Woods and the Marshall Plan, initiatives that ushered in an era of international cooperation and created structures that largely headed off further violent conflict between great powers. The moment was popularly defined by its heroism, even if its lasting legacy would be the work that went into preventing the necessity of such dramatic interventions in the future. This came out in the cultural products of the moment. Superman, created in 1938, appeared on the cover of his comic book shaking Hitler and Tojo by the scruff of their necks. Similarly, his patriotic contemporary, Captain America, was originally portrayed clocking Hitler in the jaw. Neither one received cover art that depicted diplomacy.

Yet the internationalist vision was more deeply interwoven into our cultural fabric than we often realize. Superman and Captain America were superheroes of an odd sort: tremendously powerful beings whose primary struggle was often to follow the self-imposed rules and strictures that lent their power a moral legitimacy. Neither allowed themselves to kill, and both sought to work within the law. Given their strength, either could have sought world domination, and even if they didn't, they could have been viewed with deep suspicion and even hatred by those who were convinced that they one day would seek world domination. It was only by following ostentatiously strict moral codes that they could legitimize their power and thus exist cooperatively with a world that had every right to fear them. Indeed, soon enough, both were forming communities of like-minded super beings (The Justice League for Superman, the Avengers for Captain America) and generally operating much like, well, the nation that birthed them. As Spiderman -- a later hero who, like so many heroes, bought into the idea that rules and restraint separated the good guys from the bad guys -- liked to say, "with great power comes great responsibility."

[Even the best superheroes are still extra-legal, i.e. vigilantes. If they submit to a strict moral code, it is still a moral code of their own making. Likewise, our international system is chaotic. That is, we still live in a might-makes-right world. America's moral leadership should be dedicated to making it a more rule-based and law-abiding world, with collective pressure and real consequences for those who break the rules. As Klein rightly points out, we must be the first to follow the rules which we preach at others to follow, not the last. We should lead by example, which requires, at times, restraining our own behavior -- because it is better for the world, and ourselves, in the long run. - J]

That strain of foreign-policy thinking was largely abandoned in the rubble of the Twin Towers. As Yglesias puts it, "9/11 marked the beginning of an enormous psychological change on the part of the American people." With a newfound sense of vulnerability, there was a newfound sense of fear. Restraint was a luxury, a nice ideal when we were primarily dealing with the problems of other people, but less desirable when our own lives were on the line. After 9-11, the country's foreign-policy debate contracted, and liberal internationalists, who had always been better at pursuing their agenda than selling it politically, were largely left out. Instead, the conversation was dominated by those on the right who believed in unilateral U.S military hegemony over the world, and those on the left who believed in a superficially multilateral U.S military hegemony over the world, with the option to revert back to unilateralism if other countries proved disagreeable. It was Michael O'Hanlon versus Richard Perle, and few even seemed to find that strange.

This, too, saw its expression in a new type of hero: Jack Bauer. If Superman and Captain America were the emblems of the national mood directly after World War II, Bauer expressed the national anxieties uncovered by 9-11. Rather than an invincible superhero, Bauer was but a man, one who could perish like any other, and was aware of not only his own vulnerability, but that of his family, his government, and his country. Though there were laws he was supposed to follow, the enormity of the dangers he faced and the ruthlessness of the enemies he encountered led him to break them almost constantly, and so he tortured, killed, and generally let the ends lay claim to whatever means they could think of. Indeed, he did it so often, and with such abandon, that he'll start Season 7 on trial for torture.

This, fundamentally, is the foreign-policy debate in our country. Liberals see America possessing tremendous power that must be tempered and legitimized by the rules we choose to follow and the restraint we choose to apply. Conservatives see great vulnerabilities that can only be assuaged through sufficient application of violence and will. And that's the choice: Do we want the foreign policy of Jack Bauer and John Yoo, or of Clark Kent and George Marshall? It's a question that Gen. Petraeus, sadly, has no answer for.

Pentagon: The surge is temporary? Scratch that.

Looks like Scott Ritter was right about one thing: the Pentagon is announcing the surge won't be "temporary;" it may be a permanent escalation. The fix is in for a long-term occupation, if you ask me.


Gates: Iraq drawdown may be paused
By Robert Burns
February 11, 2008 | Associated Press

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday endorsed, for the first time, the idea of pausing the drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq this summer.

"A brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense," Gates told reporters after meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Petraeus has indicated in recent weeks that he wants a "period of evaluation" this summer to assess the impact on Iraq security of reducing the U.S. military presence from 20 brigades to 15 brigades.

Of that five-brigade reduction, only one has departed thus far. The last of the five is to be gone by the end of July.

In his remarks at this U.S. base in southern Baghdad, Gates said Petraeus had given him his view on the drawdown, which some fear could result in giving up some of the security gains of recent months.

In endorsing Petraeus' suggestion of pausing after July, Gates made it clear that President Bush would have the final say. [Wait, I thought the 'commanders on the ground' had the final say? Which is it? Who decides? -- J] Until now it had been unclear how Gates felt about the idea of a pause; he had said publicly a number of times that he hoped conditions in Iraq would permit a continuation of the drawdown in the second half of the year.

In his remarks here, Gates indicated that he had begun some time ago to lean in Petraeus' direction.

"In my own thinking I had been kind of headed in that direction as well," Gates said. "But one of the keys is how long is that period (of pause and evaluation) and then what happens after that."

Although Petraeus and other senior commanders in Iraq had been suggesting the possibility of a pause in the drawdown, the idea runs counter to those in the military — particularly in the Army and Marine Corps — who worry that strains on troops from long and multiple combat tours will grow worse unless the drawdown continues after July.

Meantime, police and hospital officials said that twin car bombs struck near the compound of one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite politicians, killing at least six civilians and wounding 20. A dense cloud of black smoke rose over the offices of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the country's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC. More than dozen cars were destroyed in a blackened area, and a brick building was blown apart.

[...]

Still, Gates said, "The situation in Iraq continues to remain fragile."

Odierno is departing after 15 months in charge of the headquarters that carries out Petraeus' strategy on a day-to-day basis. Odierno is returning to Washington and has been nominated by Bush for promotion to four-star rank and assignment as Army vice chief of staff.

On Sunday, Gates said Iraq's political leaders face hard choices on how to stabilize the country despite promising new signs of progress toward reconciliation.

"They seem to have become energized over the last few weeks," Gates said. [Oh, goody! Political progress is right around the corner...again. 5 more years! 5 more years!... -- J] The Pentagon chief told reporters who traveled with him from a conference in Germany that he wants to "see what the prospects are for further success in the next couple of months."

It was Gates' first visit this year and possibly his last before Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker return to Washington in April to recommend to Bush whether to continue reducing U.S. troop levels after Petraeus' current drawdown plan is completed in July.

The question is whether conditions in Baghdad and elsewhere have improved enough to permit even more troop cuts without risking a deterioration in security. Petraeus' strategy is based on an expectation that improved security over time will give Iraqi political leaders an impetus to make compromises on legislation and other moves toward reconciliation.

In an interview with reporters traveling with Gates, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commander of all U.S. forces in Baghdad, declined to say how many troops he would be losing during the drawdown, saying he believed that information was secret. But he said that whatever troop-cut decisions are made, he will make the necessary adjustments to ensure that the security gains achieved over the past several months are not sacrificed.

"We're not going to give back any terrain," Hammond said.

Before Gates' arrival, the U.S. military said a diary and another document seized during raids showed that some al-Qaida in Iraq leaders fear the terrorist group is crumbling and that many fighters are defecting to American-backed neighborhood groups. But violence also raged Sunday. The U.S. military said a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi checkpoint in an open-market area north of Baghdad, killing at least 23 civilians and wounding 25.

McCain-Lieberman: 'The Surge Worked'

Yeah, right: the "surge" has worked so well that we should keep it going "maybe 100 years," as McCain suggested in New Hampshire last Thursday.

If indeed it worked then we should finally be able to withdraw our troops and end our occupation of Iraq!


The Surge Worked
By John McCain and Joe Lieberman
January 10, 2008 | Wall Street Journal

It was exactly one year ago tonight, in a televised address to the nation, that President George W. Bush announced his fateful decision to change course in Iraq, and to send five additional U.S. combat brigades there as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy and under the command of a new general, David Petraeus.

At the time of its announcement, the so-called surge was met with deep skepticism by many Americans -- and understandably so.

After years of mismanagement of the war, many people had grave doubts about whether success in Iraq was possible. In Congress, opposition to the surge from antiwar members was swift and severe. They insisted that Iraq was already "lost," and that there was nothing left to do but accept our defeat and retreat.

In fact, they could not have been more wrong. And had we heeded their calls for retreat, Iraq today would be a country in chaos: a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, overrun by al Qaeda and Iran.

[Truth be told, we can't say that for sure. Before the surge, Iraqi Sunnis were already turning against al Qaeda because they resented those meddling foreign occupiers as much as they resented U.S. occupiers. -- J]

Instead, conditions in that country have been utterly transformed from those of a year ago, as a consequence of the surge. Whereas, a year ago, al Qaeda in Iraq was entrenched in Anbar province and Baghdad, now the forces of Islamist extremism are facing their single greatest and most humiliating defeat since the loss of Afghanistan in 2001. Thanks to the surge, the Sunni Arabs who once constituted the insurgency's core of support in Iraq have been empowered to rise up against the suicide bombers and fanatics in their midst -- prompting Osama bin Laden to call them "traitors."

As al Qaeda has been beaten back, violence across the country has dropped dramatically. The number of car bombings, sectarian murders and suicide attacks has been slashed. American casualties have also fallen sharply, decreasing in each of the past four months.

These gains are thrilling but not yet permanent. Political progress has been slow. And although al Qaeda and the other extremists in Iraq have been dealt a critical blow, they will strike back at the Iraqi people and us if we give them the chance, as our generals on the ground continue to warn us.

[The "surge" was supposed to give Iraq's politicians "breathing space," in Pres. Bush's words, to work out their differences. They haven't. Partly because our military surge was never accompanied by a U.S. diplomatic surge. Even Gen. Petraeus said to his troops in September: "It has not worked out as we had hoped." So, how can we call the surge a success, especially when our military can't sustain the surge's troop levels past Spring 2008? -- J ]

The question we face, on the first anniversary of the surge, is no longer whether the president's decision a year ago was the right one, or if the counterinsurgency strategy developed by Gen. Petraeus is working. It is.

The question now is where we go from here to sustain the progress we have achieved -- and in particular, how soon can more of our troops come home, based on the success of the surge.

Gen. Petraeus has already announced that five "surge" brigades will be withdrawn by mid-July . The process is now underway. The Pentagon has also announced that it is conducting a series of internal reviews to examine whether and when additional troops can be withdrawn -- with Gen. Petraeus, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Central Command each asked to offer their own analysis. As the president awaits these recommendations, it is important for the rest of us to keep some realities in mind.

First, it is unknown whether the security gains we have achieved with the surge can be sustained -- and deepened -- after we have drawn down to 15 brigades . Until we know with certainty that we can keep al Qaeda on the run with 15 brigades, it would be a mistake to commit ourselves preemptively to a drawdown below that number.

As the surge should have taught us by now, troop numbers matter in Iraq. We should adjust those numbers based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders in Iraq -- first and foremost, Gen. Petraeus, who above all others has proven that he knows how to steer this war to a successful outcome.

Every American should feel a debt of gratitude to Gen. Petraeus and the great American troops fighting under him for us. This gratitude is due not simply for the extraordinary progress they have accomplished in Iraq, but for what they have taught us about ourselves.

If the mismanagement of the Iraq war from 2003 to 2006 exposed our government's capacity for incompetence, Gen. Petraeus' leadership this past year, and the conduct of the troops under his command, have reminded us of our capacity for the wisdom, the courage and the leadership that has always rallied our nation to greatness.

As Americans, we have repeatedly done what others said was impossible. Gen. Petraeus and his troops are doing that again in Iraq today.

The war for Iraq is not over. The gains we have made can be lost . But thanks to the courage of our troops, the skill and intellect of their battlefield commander, and the steadfastness of our commander in chief, we have at last begun to see the contours of what must remain our objective in this long, hard and absolutely necessary war -- victory.

Feel-good fantasies: 'Anbar miracle' & 'Sunni awakening'

Sunni World

The cheerleaders for the surge have constructed a Disney-esque fantasy of Iraq which might as well be in Orlando for all it has to do with the grim reality on the ground. And Abu Risha's assassination isn't likely to dim that fantasy.

Marc Lynch | September 13, 2007 | Prospect.org

During his visit to Iraq last week, President Bush carved out an hour to sit down with Shaykh Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha, the controversial head of the Anbar Salvation Council who had become a symbol of America's Anbar strategy. The pictures from that photo-op were likely the Shaykh's death warrant: Abu Risha was assassinated today, even as Bush prepared to use the Anbar strategy's "success" to justify our continued involvement in Iraq.

David Petraeus was quick to blame al-Qaeda for the stunning murder, a leap to judgment emblematic of all which is wrong with America's current views of the Sunnis of Iraq. In reality there are a plethora of likely suspects, reflecting the reality of an intensely factionalized and divided community which little resembles the picture offered by the administration's defenders. Leaders of other tribes deeply resented Abu Risha's prominence. Leaders of the major insurgency factions had for weeks been warning against allowing people such as Abu Risha to illegitimately reap the fruits of their jihad against the occupation. The brazen murder of America's closest Sunni ally in Iraq was as predictable as it was shocking, and carries a powerful message to both Iraqis and Americans about the real prospects for the long-term success of the American project.

- - -

Iraq's Sunnis must be amazed at the role they are playing in today's Washington. A year ago, they were "dead-enders," brutal killers disgruntled over their expulsion from power and nostalgic for the return of Saddam Hussein. The suggestion that Americans might productively talk to Sunni insurgents would have met with as much Beltway scorn as do calls today to engage in talks with Iran or Syria.

The best way to deal with these Sunni throwbacks, we were told back then, was to unleash American firepower and pummel them until they surrendered or died. America's failures were failures of timidity and political correctness. Arabs only understood force, and America needed to beat them into submission and forget about "struggling to win hearts and minds which can't be won." The rubble of Fallujah and the prisons of Abu Ghraib bear silent testimony to the influence of such thinking.

How times have changed. Since their turn against al-Qaeda which began last year, the Sunnis have become the foundation of the administration's case for staying in Iraq. Good thing we didn't kill them all.

Alas, while the president's men may have discovered Iraq's Sunnis, they still show little sign of actually understanding them. The cheerleaders for the surge have constructed a Disney-esque fantasy of an Iraqi "Sunni World" which might as well be in Orlando for all it has to do with the grim realities of today's Iraq.

The Sunni turn against al-Qaeda had very little to do with American diplomacy or military efforts, and far more to do with local power struggles and preparations for the widely-expected coming war with the Shia. The origins of this shift in Sunni politics date back to last year's attempt by al-Qaeda in Iraq to impose its hegemony over the Sunni insurgency and to establish physical and political control in a variety of locales.

Al-Qaeda's attacks on Iraqi Shia had always been controversial among the insurgency's factions, many of which preferred to keep a tight focus on attacking American forces and Iraqi government personnel. Al-Qaeda made many enemies [among Sunnis – J] with its grandiose rhetoric, attacks on local political figures, attempts to enforce Islamic morality, and decisions to muscle in on tribal smuggling routes. When it declared the "Islamic State of Iraq" as an umbrella for the insurgent groups, the major "nationalist" factions which make up the overwhelming majority of the insurgency decided they had seen enough. The Islamic Army of Iraq released the first public denunciation, other factions followed suit, and nasty fighting (both verbal and military) ensued. The root of the conflict was a struggle for power within the Sunni community -- not attitudes towards the United States or even the central Iraqi government. The turn against al-Qaeda did not mean abandoning the insurgency, even if some of the groups are willing to use American support for their current tactical needs.

- - -

General Petraeus worked creatively and effectively to encourage this trend, and soldiers and diplomats on the ground seem to be aware of the complexities of the new "cooperative" mission. The same can't be said for surge cheerleaders in the United States. Much of the conventional wisdom about the Sunni areas now seems to come from the impressions formed by politicians and journalists on stage-managed visits to Iraq, or by carefully crafted press interviews with "former insurgents" hand-picked by American military handlers. But we don't need such a mediated view. Leaders of the major Iraqi Sunni groups actually speak quite often and quite candidly to their own people, though: in open letters, in official statements posted on internet forums, in the Arab and Iraqi press, and in statements released on al-Jazeera and other satellite television stations. What they say in such statements, in Arabic, when addressing their own constituencies, might be considered a more reliable guide to their strategy and thinking. So what are the major Iraqi Sunni leaders saying?

In their literature and public rhetoric, the Sunni insurgency has already defeated the American occupation -- which is why the Americans stopped fighting them and came to them for help in fighting al-Qaeda. One discovers virtually nothing in this literature of the American conceit that our forces wore them out or forced them to come to the table. During his meeting with President Bush in Anbar last week, Abu Risha, reportedly joked that his people had achieved in four months what the American military could not achieve in four years. It was one of the few claims made by Abu Risha with which most Iraqi Sunnis would agree, and one which should probably have infuriated more Americans than it seems to have.

Most of these statements are already looking past the question of al-Qaeda, and are instead in preparation for the aftermath of an American withdrawal. The overwhelming theme of recent Sunni discourse is the need to achieve political unity to prepare for a post-occupation Iraq. While Americans celebrate their cordial relations with certain tribal shaykhs, the insurgency's leaders publicly fumed that the fruits of their victory might be snatched by undeserving interlopers. The widely disseminated pictures of President Bush shaking hands with Sattar Abu Risha, the epitome of such illegitimate bon vivantes, were likely his death warrant.

Meanwhile, certain tribes worry that the groundwork is being laid for the domination of Sunni politics by other tribes, and that this is in fact the American plan -- to leave behind a divided, suspicious, and compromised array of tribes which will be unable to act politically. An important recent open letter from the highly influential Association of Muslim Scholars powerfully invoked the experience of the Afghan jihad, which collapsed upon itself after defeating the Soviet Union. The famously fractious insurgency has been trying hard to put forward a public political front to fill this perceived void, though at this point the various projects still seem to exist mostly on paper.

Partition, soft or hard, has far fewer fans in Anbar than in Washington. Most Sunnis continue to support a unified Iraqi state, and have exaggerated expectations about the role they should play in such a state. A recent letter from the "Amir" of the Islamic Army of Iraq claimed that Sunnis made up 60 percent of the population of Iraq, and few Sunnis seem ready to accept the status of "tolerated minority" within a Shia-dominated state. The Maliki government is almost universally denounced as sectarian, culpable for sectarian cleansing, and an Iranian puppet.

There is absolutely nothing in current Sunni discourse to suggest that any sort of "bottom up reconciliation" with the Shia is taking place or that the tactical cooperation with American forces against al-Qaeda is producing any kind of meaningful integration into the Iraqi state. Far more common is the need to prepare for future conflict with the Shia and, increasingly, the Kurds (see Kirkuk and Mosul). Resentment over the sectarian 'cleansing' of Baghdad runs exceptionally high, and few Sunnis seem prepared to accept any political settlement which does not include their return to Baghdad -- something that the Shia militias (which continue to dominate the Iraqi Police) seem rather unlikely to accept.

Finally, the alliance of convenience with American forces has not translated into support for the United States at the mass level. A public opinion survey conducted last month -- well into the surge -- found that only 1 percent of Sunnis say they have confidence in American forces and only 1 percent of Sunnis support the American presence in Iraq. Rather, 72 percent of Sunnis say that the US forces should leave immediately, 95 percent say that the presence of U.S. troops makes security worse, and 93 percent still see attacks on coalition forces as acceptable. Such results should make obvious the vacuity of claims that the turn against al-Qaeda was a victory for American diplomacy.

These Iraqi views throw into sharp relief the point I made in early August that the American strategy of empowering Sunnis at the local level actually worked against the goal of strengthening the national Iraqi state. This contradiction emerged as a key theme in this week's congressional hearings, and forced the president's team to concoct a gerry-rigged strategic argument linking the developments at the local and national levels. But these scenarios are almost impossibly utopian and astonishingly divorced from the messy realities of politics. The idea that the current strategy will produce bottom-up reconciliation, develop a political constituency for moderation, and push political development on the national level is deeply misleading. Does anybody really believe that handing these angry young Sunnis jobs in a police force dominated by the most sectarian Shia militias will give them a stake in the current political system?

Abu Risha's murder demonstrates the strategic naivete of these arguments. The Anbar strategy relies on a series of best-case scenarios in which virtually nothing can go wrong -- and when, in Iraq, has nothing gone wrong? Other powerful players were always going to be willing and able to take steps against a process which threatened their interests: not just al-Qaeda, but competing tribes, insurgency groups, and Iraqi Shia, all of whom fear that the guns will soon be aimed at them. The murder of Abu Risha exposes realities which should have been obvious, and offer a grim context for Bush's attempts to rest the case for America's war in Iraq on Anbar's "success."

Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, and author of the popular Middle East politics blog Abu Aardvark. His most recent book, Voices of the New Arab Public: Al-Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today, was published last year by Columbia University Press.

Q&A with Powell, and reflections on Petraeus

I deleted the Q&A with Powell that I didn't think was as interesting, and focused on the questions on Iraq and terrorism. You can follow the link and read the whole interview if you want.

As one active-duty general gives his report on Iraq today, let's read what a retired top-ranking U.S. general has to say about the success of the 'surge.' And let's keep in mind that behind closed doors, Powell says he "did his duty" by privately expressing his objections to President Bush about the plan to invade Iraq -- yet in public he towed the Administration's line without expressing any doubts. If we couldn't depend on Colin Powell to give it to us straight back then, what makes us think we can rely on Gen. Petraeus now to say what he really thinks, unedited, and without due fealty to his commander in chief? Is Petraeus a better or more honorable man than Powell? Maybe so. Or, more likely, is it the nature of the job to button one's lip when one knows the commander in chief thinks differently?

Indeed Petraeus was promoted with the very task of executing the 'surge' strategy. A majority of the American public doesn't think Petraeus is about to say anything to undermine the wisdom and credibility of that strategy. In other words, they don't trust Petraeus not to sugar-coat it. (Thank God, there is still a majority with the sense God gave them!...)

GQ ICON: COLIN POWELL
He was pushed aside in the run-up to war, but as he tells Walter Isaacson, he, too, bears some of the blame

Interview by Walter Isaacson

Q: Your hero General George Marshall, when he was secretary of state, oversaw the creation of amazing new institutions and doctrines—NATO, the Marshall Plan—to deal with the global threat posed by Soviet Communism. Now that we're faced with new global threats, what type of creative responses would he and his wise men be devising?

To some extent, he faced a more dangerous threat, and it was an easier one to work with. There was one identifiable enemy that was on the other side of an identifiable terrain feature. It was state versus state. They were able to put in place state-based structures.

Q: Isn't the new global threat we face even more dangerous?

What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?

I would approach this differently, in almost Marshall-like terms. What are the great opportunities out there—ones that we can take advantage of? It should not be just about creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave in Pakistan. It should be about how do we create institutions that keep the world moving down a path of wealth creation, of increasing respect for human rights, creating democratic institutions, and increasing the efficiency and power of market economies? This is perhaps the most effective way to go after terrorists.

Q: So you think we are getting too hunkered down and scared?

Yes! We are taking too much counsel of our fears.

This doesn't mean there isn't a terrorist threat. There is a threat. And we should send in military forces when we have a target to deal with. We should also secure our airports, if that makes us safer. But let's welcome every foreign student we can get our hands on. Let's make sure that foreigners come to the Mayo Clinic here, and not the Mayo facility in Dubai or somewhere else. Let's make sure people come to Disney World and not throw them up against the wall in Orlando simply because they have a Muslim name. Let's also remember that this country was created by immigrants and thrives as a result of immigration, and we need a sound immigration policy.

Let's show the world a face of openness and what a democratic system can do. That's why I want to see Guantánamo closed. It's so harmful to what we stand for. We literally bang ourselves in the head by having that place. What are we doing this to ourselves for? Because we're worried about the 380 guys there? Bring them here! Give them lawyers and habeas corpus. We can deal with them. We are paying a price when the rest of the world sees an America that seems to be afraid and is not the America they remember.

You can drive up the road from here and come to a spot where there is a megachurch over here, a little Episcopal church over there, a Catholic church around the corner that's almost cathedral-size, and between them is a huge Hindu temple. There are no police needed to guard any of this. There are not many places in the world where you would see that. Yes, there are a few dangerous nuts in Brooklyn and New Jersey who want to blow up Kennedy Airport and Fort Dix. These are dangerous criminals, and we must deal with them. But come on, this is not a threat to our survival! The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn't do it to ourselves, and we shouldn't use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.

Q: One of your legacies to history will be what's known as the Powell Doctrine. How do you define it?

Essentially it says: Avoid war—and if that's not possible, and it's necessary to use arms to solve a political problem, then do it in a decisive way. You remove as much doubt as you can about the outcome. In addition, you need to have a clearly defined mission, and you must have some understanding of how it's going to end.

When the first Gulf War came along, I told President Bush [the elder] that when we had 250,000 troops in the region, we could defend Saudi Arabia from an Iraqi invasion. But if he wanted to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, then General Schwarzkopf will need an additional 250,000 troops. Everybody gasped. And I told the president exactly how we would use them all, and he agreed.

We also had a clear mission, which was to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait. And that's how we built a coalition with almost every other country in the world. We thought through where it was going to end. We said we wanted to leave Iraq with enough of an army so that it is not threatened by Iran. And we want to accomplish the mission we were given, which is getting the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. We were not interested in taking down the government. It was never our mission to go to Baghdad. For twelve years, I had to listen to criticism about that part of the plan. I don't hear it criticized too much now.

Q: The current Iraq war seems to have violated almost all of these precepts. We talked about this before the war.

The military presented its plans, and I was secretary of state, so it wasn't really my role, but I said it didn't seem to me that the plans called for enough force to impose our will or enough troops to deal with the problems that might come up. After one of the meetings, I felt strongly enough about it that I took the liberty to call General Tommy Franks [the regional commander] directly—something I shouldn't have done, but I did. I said, "Let's talk general-to-general." I said, "I have my doubts as to whether or not you have enough force to execute." And Tommy said, "Well, I think we do, Mr. Secretary." And then he immediately called Don Rumsfeld, which he should have. And Don correctly said, "It's good that Colin has been up-front, and now let's discuss it in front of the president." And we did. The president heard from his military commanders and his joint chiefs of staff and his secretary of defense that they felt they had enough troops.

Q: Were they right?

They were right for the first part, the capture of Baghdad. And I never really had any question about the force needed for that. My question had been, "Have you guys really thought through the aftermath?" That's what we hadn't done. That was the big mistake. Don had written a list of the worst things that could happen, but we didn't do the contingency planning on what we would do about it. So we watched those buildings get burned down, and nobody told the divisions, "Hey, go in there and declare martial law and whack a few people and it will stop."

Then the insurgency started, and we didn't acknowledge it. They said it wasn't an insurgency. They looked up the definition. They said it was a few dead-enders! And so we didn't respond in a way that might have stopped it. And then the civil war started at the beginning of last year. I call it a civil war, but some say no, it's not a civil war, it's a war against civilians. In fact, we have total civil disorder.

Q: Do you think the surge makes sense?

You can surge all of the American troops you want, but they can't stop this. Suppose I'm a battalion commander. My troops ask, "What do I do today, boss?" "Let's go fight the Shia militias!" "What do I do tomorrow?" "Let's go fight the Sunni insurgents!" "What do I do the day after tomorrow?" "Let's go chase Al Qaeda!" "What do we do the day after that?" "We're going to guard streets!" Our kids are fantastic. But this is not sustainable. Our surge can work only with an Iraqi political and military surge.

Q: Are you sorry you didn't question things more forcefully?

At the time, when I felt the president might not have focused on all the potential consequences, I said I needed to see him. I went to the White House and had a private session with him. I told him that we could knock over Saddam's regime but he needed to understand what we would be faced with once we had done that. It was my "When you break it, you own it" speech. I said that this invasion would tie up the better part of 40 percent of our army for an indefinite period of time. It will be hugely expensive. You will be dealing with this for a long time to come. I said, "Take it to the U.N. See if we can get something from the U.N. that might allow us to avoid this war." He said, "Let's share this with the others." And a few days later, we had a discussion with everyone, some by videoconference. They eventually agreed that we should take it to the U.N., some more willingly than others. Dick [Cheney] didn't think it would work, and Don [Rumsfeld] I was not sure about, because you couldn't always tell his opinion. Had I done my duty? I think so.

Q: Do you feel responsible for giving the U.N. flawed intelligence?

I didn't know it was flawed. Everybody was using it. The CIA was saying the same thing for two years. I gave perhaps the most accurate presentation of the intelligence as we knew it—without any of the "Mushroom clouds are going to show up tomorrow morning" and all the rest of that stuff. But the fact of the matter is that a good part of it was wrong, and I am sorry that it was wrong.

Q: Was it twisted?

Not by me. What I used was the intelligence that was also available to everyone in the administration and to the Congress. Some of these senators are now presidential candidates who are saying they didn't read the National Intelligence Estimate they had asked for. It is fair, however, to say that some members of the administration took the intelligence to a higher plane than it deserved.

Q: So you think we should be a bit more on guard against arrogance when we pursue a democracy agenda?

[laughs] Very good, very good. We have a tendency to lecture and perhaps not think things through. We have to be careful what we wish for. Are we happy with the democracy that Hamas gave us? There are some places that are not ready for the kind of democracy we find so attractive for ourselves. They are not culturally ready for it, they are not historically ready for it, and they don't have the needed institutions.

Q: How can we restore America's image?

We should remember what that image was, back after World War II. It was the image of a generous country that sought not to impose its will on other countries or even to impose its values. But it showed the way, and it helped other countries, and it opened its doors to people—visitors and refugees and immigrants.

America could not survive without immigration. Even the undocumented immigrants are contributing to our economy. That's the country my parents came to. That's the image we have to portray to the rest of the world: kind, generous, a nation of nations, touched by every nation, and we touch every nation in return. That's what people still want to believe about us. They still want to come here. We've lost a bit of the image, but we haven't lost the reality yet. And we can fix the image by reflecting a welcoming attitude—and by not taking counsel of our fears and scaring ourselves to death that everybody coming in is going to blow up something. It ain't the case.