Buchanan: Boehner, stand up to Obama on Syria

It's been a while since I've posted anything by my main isolationist paleo-conservative, Mr. Pat Buchanan. But with the proverbial excrement about to hit the ventilator over Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons, it's about time.  I can't find much to disagree with below.

I could give a shilling about the U.S. or Obama saving face.  The dangerous idea that we must "lead" and intervene everywhere, even where our vital interests are not at stake, or else risking losing our influence, is the road to empire, overreach and collapse.  

Will Boehner Stop Our Rogue President?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

August 30, 2013 | Human Events

The next 72 hours will be decisive in the career of the speaker of the House. The alternatives he faces are these:

John Boehner can, after “consultation,” give his blessing to Barack Obama’s decision to launch a war on Syria, a nation that has neither attacked nor threatened us.

Or Boehner can instruct Obama that, under our Constitution, in the absence of an attack on the United States, Congress alone has the authority to decide whether the United States goes to war.

As speaker, he can call the House back on Monday to debate, and decide, whether to authorize the war Obama is about to start. In the absence of a Congressional vote for war, Boehner should remind the president that U.S. cruise missile strikes on Syria, killing soldiers and civilians alike, would be the unconstitutional and impeachable acts of a rogue president.

Moreover, an attack on Syria would be an act of stupidity.

Why this rush to war? Why the hysteria? Why the panic?

Syria and Assad will still be there two weeks from now or a month from now, and we will know far more then about what happened last week.

Understandably, Obama wants to get the egg off his face from having foolishly drawn his “red line” against chemical weapons, and then watching Syria, allegedly, defy His Majesty. But saving Obama’s face does not justify plunging his country into another Mideast war.

Does Obama realize what a fool history will make of him if he is stampeded into a new war by propaganda that turns out to be yet another stew of ideological zealotry and mendacity?

As of today, we do not know exactly what gas was used around Damascus, how it was delivered, who authorized it and whether President Bashar Assad ever issued such an order.

Yet, one Wall Street Journal columnist is already calling on Obama to assassinate Assad along with his family.

Do we really want back into that game? When John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy explored the assassination option with Fidel Castro, blowback came awfully swift in Dallas.

Again, what is the urgency of war now if we are certain we are right? What do we lose by waiting for more solid evidence, and then presenting our case to the Security Council?

Kennedy did that in the Cuban missile crisis. U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson made the case. And the world saw we were right.

If, in the face of incontrovertible proof, Russia and China veto sanctions, the world will see that. Then let John Kerry make his case to Congress and convince that body to authorize war, if he can.

But if Obama cannot convince Congress, we cannot — and ought not — go to war. The last thing America needs is an unnecessary, unconstitutional war in that God-forsaken region that both Congress and the country oppose.

Indeed, the reports about this gas attack on Syrian civilians have already begun to give off the distinct aroma of a false-flag operation.

Assad has offered U.N. inspectors secure access to where gas was allegedly used. It is the rebels who seem not to want too deep or long an investigation.

Our leaders should ask themselves. If we are stampeded into this war, whose interests are served? For it is certainly not Assad’s and certainly not America’s.

We are told Obama intends to hit Syria with cruise missiles for just a few days to punish Assad and deter any future use of gas, not to topple his regime. After a few hundred missiles and a thousand dead Syrians, presumably, we call it off.

Excuse me, but as Casey Stengel said, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

Nations that start wars and attack countries, as Gen. Tojo and Adm. Yamamoto can testify, do not get to decide how wide the war gets, how long it goes on or how it ends.

If the United States attacks Damascus and Syria’s command and control, under the rules of war Syria would be within its rights to strike Washington, the Pentagon and U.S. bases all across the Middle East.

Does Obama really want to start a war, the extent and end of which he cannot see, that is likely to escalate, as its promoters intend and have long plotted, into a U.S. war on Iran? Has the election in Iran of a new president anxious to do a deal with America on Iran’s nuclear program caused this panic in the War Party?

If we think the markets reacted badly to a potential U.S. strike on Syria, just wait for that big one to start. Iran has a population the size of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq combined, and sits astride the Straits of Hormuz through which the free world’s oil flows.

And who will be our foremost fighting ally in Syria should we attack Assad’s army? The Al-Nusra Front, an arm of al-Qaida and likely successor to power, should Assad fall.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Chomsky: Latin America is no U.S. whipping boy

Here's how my man Chomsky sums up a revolution that's going on down below us, unnoticed by all but a few U.S. elites:

There are other cases, but the crime of rendition returns us to the matter of Latin American independence. The Open Society Institute recently released a study called “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition.” It reviewed global participation in the crime, which was very broad, including among European countries.

Latin American scholar Greg Grandin pointed out that one region was absent from the list of shame: Latin America. That is doubly remarkable. Latin America had long been the reliable “backyard” for the United States. If any of the locals sought to raise their heads, they would be decapitated by terror or military coup. And as it was under U.S. control throughout the latter half of the last century, Latin America was one of the torture capitals of the world.

That's no longer the case, as the United States and Canada are being virtually expelled from the hemisphere.

Without the threat of Communism to cover our crimes in Latin America, we don't have the great excuse we once did to foment coups and back dictators. The War on Drugs still serves that purpose to some extent, but not everywhere.

America's Imperial Power Is Showing Real Signs of Decline

By Noam Chomsky

August 2, 2013 | AlterNet

URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/chomsky-americas-imperial-power-showing-real-signs-decline?paging=off

Sachs: N. Korea not so crazy, given U.S. past

Usually Jeffrey Sachs writes about global economics and poverty, but for some reason he was moved to write about N. Korea and how there is quite a lot of reason as opposed to madness in its actions, considering how the U.S. is not a very loyal friend to dictatorial regimes.

Iraq, Libya and Panama are all countries whose dictators "found a common language" with the U.S., only to be killed or arrested a few years later with America's support.

Sachs is also correct to point out the United States' rank hypocrisy when it comes to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: "That the US demands that this or that state must denuclearize while others [Israel, India and Pakistan] flout the treaty is an assertion of [U.S.] power, not principle."

We say we are a nation founded on ideals. When we cease to draw strength from our ideals, but instead only our military and (declining) economic might, then we must resign ourselves to the inevitable decline and fall that all empires suffer.

A Better Approach Towards North Korea

By Jeffrey Sachs

April 15, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/17cQWZi

Rosenberg: Obama's better-managed empire

Here's how Rosenberg sums up the lost promise of Obama's presidency, at least when it comes to America's foreign wars:

It's tragic, really. Obama certainly has the capacity to comprehend the sea of troubles he is sailing on, but he lacks the will, desire, and imagination to steer America into a fundamentally different direction. He cannot even begin to conceive of "no war" as an option - indeed, as Martin Luther King would say, as the only option. He is America's "leader" in a decidedly limited, managerial sense, when history and the American people had cried out for so much more - dare I say it? - For a visionary... Or at least for a leader along the path that visionaries have lit before us. Instead, Obama is a go-along-to-get-along president who shares virtually all of the imperial operational mindsets, even as the ever-mounting costs of empire are tearing the American republic apart. Virtually all the aberrations from constitutional government that the neocons under Bush advanced have been continued under Obama, thus confirming them as bipartisan aberrations.

Which is why, tragically, it's America, indulging its own demons, that continues to make al-Qaeda's case, in a way that nobody else possibly can - certainly not al-Qaeda itself.

It's not America alone, of course. It's simply the way of empire.

The lost promise of Barack Obama

A smarter empire is no substitute for a lost republic.

By Paul Rosenberg

February 19, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013217838625713.html

Iraqi democracy = growing Iranian influence?

So we've spread democracy like butter across Iraq, and... Now we don't like how it tastes: Shiite dominance and closer ties to our regional foe, Iran.

Perhaps we're not cut out for this empire business? We don't have the foresight and cunning required to make vanquished nations serve our interests.

U.S. now urges Iraqis to take their time in forming government

The change in approach comes as an anti-American cleric's political faction agrees to support Maliki, a deal that would run counter to U.S. interests and risk further destabilizing the country.

By Liz Sly

October 18, 2010 | Los Angeles Times

URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq-us-20101018,0,2366226.story

In U.S., peace just isn't taken seriously

Yeah, it's just a damn shame that talking about peace these days -- at least in Washington and the major media -- is regarded as pitiful naivete.

And not just peace, but our ignoring all the weapons that we sell to war-torn countries -- America is the world's largest arms exporter by a wide margin.

Real conservatives ought to be appalled, as Ron Paul is appalled, at America's empire of hundreds of military bases around the globe. As Engelhardt points out (again):

"This wasn't always the case. The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns, and mercenary corporations -- as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it -- with genuine horror."

America's Tragic Descent into Empire

July 7, 2010 | AlterNet

The following is an excerpt from The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's by Tom Engelhardt (Haymarket, 2010).

URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/147428/america's_tragic_descent_into_empire/?page=entire

Original teabagger Ron Paul explains 'limited gov't' to GOP

Ron Paul chastises at GOP conference: Conservatives 'like the empire'
By Andrew McLemore
April 10, 2010 | Raw Story

Texas Rep. Ron Paul proved once again Saturday that his politics continue to divide the Republican Party.

He was met with both disapproval and applause during the Southern Republican Leadership Conference for describing conservatives as hypocritical when they call for a return to Constitutional values while supporting foreign wars.

"The conservatives and the liberals, they both like to spend. Conservatives spend money on different things. They like embassies, and they like occupation. They like the empire. They like to be in 135 countries and 700 bases.

"Don't you think it's rather conservative to say, 'Oh it's good to follow the Constitution. Oh, except for war. Let the President go to war anytime they want.' We can do better with peace than with war."

While most of the other speakers at the event used plenty of rhetoric for "easy applause," as Washington Post reporter David Weigel put it, Paul stuck to the outrage over American foreign policy that has defined his platform.

Whenever the boos grew loud enough, Paul returned to his "humble" foreign policy stance.

"It's been 60 years since we went to war in Korea," said Paul. "Why do we have to have troops there?"

Buchanan: Honorable Exit From Empire

Honorable Exit From Empire

By Patrick J. Buchanan
July 25, 2008 | HumanEvents.com


As any military historian will testify, among the most difficult of maneuvers is the strategic retreat. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, Lee's retreat to Appomattox and MacArthur's retreat from the Yalu come to mind. The British Empire abandoned India in 1947 -- and a Muslim-Hindu bloodbath ensued.

France's departure from Indochina was ignominious, and her abandonment of hundreds of thousands of faithful Algerians to the FALN disgraceful. Few American can forget the humiliation of Saigon '75, or the boat people, or the Cambodian holocaust.

Strategic retreats that turn into routs are often the result of what Lord Salisbury called "the commonest error in politics ... sticking to the carcass of dead policies."

From 1989 to 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and breakup of the U.S.S.R., America had an opportunity to lay down its global burden and become again what Jeane Kirkpatrick called "a normal country in a normal time."

We let the opportunity pass by, opting instead to use our wealth and power to convert the world to democratic capitalism. And we have reaped the reward of all the other empires that went before: A sinking currency, relative decline, universal enmity, a series of what Rudyard Kipling called "the savage wars of peace."

Yet, opportunity has come anew for America to shed its imperial burden and become again the republic of our fathers.

The chairman of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang Party has just been hosted for six days by Beijing. Commercial flights have begun between Taipei and the mainland. Is not the time ripe for America to declare our job done, that the relationship between China and Taiwan is no longer a vital interest of the United States?

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government wants a status of forces agreement with a timetable for full withdrawal of U.S. troops. Is it not time to say yes, to declare that full withdrawal is our goal as well, that the United States seeks no permanent bases in Iraq?

On July 4, Reuters, in a story headlined "Poland Rejects U.S. Missile Offer," reported from Warsaw: "Poland spurned as insufficient on Friday a U.S. offer to boost its air defenses in return for basing anti-missile interceptors on its soil. ...

"'We have not reached a satisfactory result on the issue of increasing the level of Polish security,' Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a news conference after studying the latest U.S. proposal."

Tusk is demanding that America "provide billions of dollars worth of U.S. investment to upgrade Polish air defenses in return for hosting 10 two-stage missile interceptors," said Reuters.

Reflect if you will on what is going on here.

By bringing Poland into NATO, we agreed to defend her against the world's largest nation, Russia, with thousands of nuclear weapons. Now the Polish regime is refusing us permission to site 10 anti-missile missiles on Polish soil, unless we pay Poland billions for the privilege.

Has Uncle Sam gone senile?

No. Tusk has Sam figured out. The old boy is so desperate to continue in his Cold War role as world's Defender of Democracy he will even pay the Europeans -- to defend Europe.

Why not tell Tusk that if he wants an air defense system, he can buy it; that we Americans are no longer willing to pay Poland for the privilege of defending Poland; that the anti-missile missile deal is off. And use cancellation of the missile shield to repair relations with a far larger and more important power, Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Consider, too, the opening South Korea is giving us to end our 60-year commitment to defend her against the North. For weeks, Seoul hosted anti-American protests against a trade deal that allows U.S. beef into South Korea. Koreans say they fear mad-cow disease.

Yet, when a new deal was cut to limit imports to U.S. beef from cattle less than 30 months old, that too was rejected by the protesters. Behind the demonstrations lies a sediment of anti-Americanism.

In 2002, a Pew Research Center survey of 42 nations found 44 percent of South Koreans, second highest number of any country, holding an unfavorable view of the United States. A Korean survey put the figure at 53 percent, with 80 percent of youth holding a negative view. By 39 percent to 35 percent, South Koreans saw the United States as a greater threat than North Korea.

Can someone explain why we keep 30,000 troops on the DMZ of a nation whose people do not even like us?

The raison d'etre for NATO was the Red Army on the Elbe. It disappeared two decades ago. The Chinese army left North Korea 50 years ago. Yet NATO endures and the U.S. Army stands on the DMZ. Why?

Because, if all U.S. troops were brought home from Europe and Korea, 10,000 rice bowls would be broken. They are the rice bowls of politicians, diplomats, generals, journalists and think tanks who would all have to find another line of work.

And that is why the Empire will endure until disaster befalls it, as it did all the others.

Our amazingly expensive American 'empire'

The Colossus
By Paul Waldman
January 31, 2008 | Prospect.org

[...]

In 2007 the DoD budget exceeded $500 billion -- which doesn't include the $170 billion we spent for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or military-related spending in other departments (like the Energy Department, where much of the spending on nuclear weapons goes). Although worldwide figures for 2007 are not yet available, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's comprehensive data indicate that in 2006, global military spending stood at $1.2 trillion. In other words, we've been spending as much on our military as the rest of the world combined. Our economic dominance may be threatened by the rise of China, India, and the European Union, but when it comes to the instruments of war, nobody else is even close.

Spending that much money takes personnel, of course. There are currently about 1,375,000 men and women in uniform, plus another 671,000 civilians working for DoD, for a total of over 2 million employees. And according to the U.S. Census, another 1.4 million people work in defense-related industries in the private sector -- though we should grant that some of those people produce armaments for the overseas market. After all, America is still the world's leading arms dealer (though Russia is giving us a run for our money).

And if there is any doubt that America is still an empire, consider how far-flung our military power is. According to the Defense Department's 2007 Base Structure Report, we maintain 823 military facilities in 39 foreign countries, and another 86 facilities in seven U.S. territories. According to the document, "DoD occupies a reported 343,867 buildings throughout the world, valued at over $464 billion and comprising almost 2.4 billion square feet." The DoD also owns 32.4 million acres of land (nearly all of it in the U.S.), or over 50,000 square miles, an area about the size of Louisiana (or half of Colorado; or Delaware, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland combined).

You will not be surprised to learn that the remaining Republican contenders for the presidency all demonstrate a desire to make the military even bigger. John McCain says that he wants "a larger and more capable military," no shock from a man who barely ever met a military operation he didn't support. The one who actually provides some specificity is Mitt Romney, who wants to increase military spending to four percent of Gross Domestic Product. According to the government's current projections, GDP in 2009 will be $15.3 trillion, which means Romney is proposing to boost military spending by about 20 percent, to $612 billion in his first year in office (not counting Iraq). By 2012, four percent of GDP would mean a military budget of over $700 billion. (Incidentally, there is no reason you would want to peg military spending to a particular level of GDP -- after all, if the economy doubled in size, it wouldn't follow that we would need twice as many tanks, guns, and soldiers.)

But even if a Democrat wins the White House, we shouldn't expect any reductions in military spending any time soon. Though the prevailing Democratic wisdom of five years ago -- that the way to appear "strong" on national security is to go along with whatever harebrained scheme Republicans cook up, then hope to change the subject -- has been utterly discredited, no particular vision on military affairs has taken its place, particularly not one that involves overall cuts. The Republican candidates may be offering little but mindless militarism, but the Democrats don't have much to say -- although Barack Obama wants to add 65,000 Army soldiers and 27,000 Marines. A consistent hawk, Hillary Clinton evinces no particular desire to reduce the size of the military either.

As we've learned in the last decade, an extra dollar of military spending doesn't necessarily buy you an extra measure of security; indeed, depending on how you use it, it can make you far less safe. Our worldwide footprint continually creates more enemies; particularly for people or societies that put a high value on pride and honor, the mere presence of foreign troops is an affront, a daily reminder that we are strong and they are weak. As citizens of the empire, it is hard for us to imagine just what it must be like to know that another nation can plant a military base in your homeland. Those governments may be happy to have Americans invested in their security. But it no doubt feels to many ordinary people as though they're shopkeepers, and the resident Mafioso has strolled into their store, stuffed a few items in his pockets, and told them that he'd like to hold some meetings in the back room. Not only that, they'll be hiring his nephew.

Back in 2003, Howard Dean caused an uproar when he said the United States "won't always have the strongest military." After the predictable faux-outrage from his primary opponents, he attempted to explain that he wasn't talking about his potential presidency or even his lifetime. But less than a decade and a half after the end of the Cold War, our permanent military supremacy had already become part of the national identity, something no patriotic American could challenge.

When the only adversary who could seriously threaten us dissolved, we should have given up the pretension that our military is actually involved much in "defense." Outside the of the fevered imagination of the Glenn Becks of the world, no sane person truly believes that if we don't play our cards right, our form of government could be overthrown and we could wind up living in an outpost of the world Islamic caliphate. Red Dawn may have been a silly movie in 1984, but think how ridiculous it would be today to imagine that America's enemies would actually take over our territory and herd us into reeducation camps.

Yet we still pretend that what the military does is "keep us safe." But with the exception of missile defense (a colossally stupid boondoggle that doesn't work, probably won't ever work, and couldn't accomplish its mission even if it worked perfectly, but that's a topic for another day), the portion of our "defense" spending that goes to actual defense is miniscule. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines aren't patrolling our borders and training to defend our cities. What they prepare for, and what they're called to do, is to project our extraordinary military power outward. Some of these missions are noble and some are tragically absurd, but no matter who gets elected in November, it won't be changing for a long time to come.

American Thinker: Time for Empire

December 08, 2006

The Iraq Study Group Flunks

By J. Peter Mulhern | The American Thinker

"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.... The United States should immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region. [sacrificing Israel to entice our Muslim enemies into bailing us out] . . . The primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army, which would take over primary responsibility for combat operations."

There it is, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) report in a nutshell. Definitive proof that the cream of our establishment has exiled itself from planet earth and it has no apparent intention of coming home. If the ISG set out to secure a humiliating American defeat it couldn't have come up with more destructive recommendations.

The political class, Republicans and Democrats alike, insists on taking the ISG report seriously. Our leaders are struggling to formulate some new policy for Iraq. But they can't succeed because they refuse to understand what has gone wrong with the old one.

There is nothing complex about the problems in Iraq. Those problems are entirely transparent to anyone with a firm grasp on reality. Unfortunately almost nobody in our political class has a grasp on reality, let alone a firm one, and very few Americans seem to notice. Most of us, after all, get our meat wrapped in plastic on Styrofoam trays. We are adept at blinding ourselves to unpleasantness and reality is relentlessly unpleasant.

Supporting the Iraqi Army

The ISG report is all about facilitating our retreat from Iraq. That is what changing our focus from combat to training would be intended to accomplish. But retreat on any terms would be defeat and we can't afford defeat. [Nor can we afford victory. Boy, what a pickle! Maybe we can ante up for a “draw”?.... – Jay]

The unpleasant reality in Iraq is that the price of victory will be both horrifying bloodshed and a commitment to be the dominant power in Iraq for decades to come. To win you must fight, and then you must hold on to your gains. The entire political establishment is desperate to avoid facing this reality. [They’re not desperate to avoid facing it, they’re desperate to avoid it. Big difference. If you think the American people will tolerate a decades-long occupation of Iraq costing trillions of dollars, you’re smoking Tony Snow’s rope. –Jay]

President Bush is as guilty of confusion here as either the ISG or the softest-headed congressional Democrat. He is, in fact, the principal author of the "cut and run" strategy. From the beginning of the war in Iraq he has said that we will stay there only as long as it takes to "do the job." His undefended (and indefensible) assumption is that if we just set up a decent government in Iraq we can turn tail. The new government will then take over the task of suppressing the bad guys in Iraq which will help us move toward victory in the broader "war on terror."

The truth is that any government we set up in Iraq will be useful to us only so long as we are there to keep it under close supervision. The instant we leave, any government we leave behind will divide up among the various factions and join in a general bloodletting. With the sole exception of the Kurds, each faction has foreign sponsors and those sponsors are our enemies. When the killing finally stops, Iraq, or at least large parts of what used to be Iraq, will be securely under the influence of one or more of our enemies and the effort to win our Arab and Persian War will be crippled. [Did I miss something? Since when are we fighting an “Arab and Persian War”? Why don’t we just f-ing declare war on everybody and get it over with? Conservatives are insane. – Jay]

Iraq will remain in our sphere of influence as long as our troops are the dominant force within its borders and no longer. It is predominantly Arab and overwhelmingly Muslim. It isn't friendly ground. Our conquest of Iraq was a major strategic victory in the Arab and Persian War. Unless we've gone stark raving mad we won't abandon that victory. [We were stark raving mad to invade and occupy in the first place, you dumbsh—s! You got us into this mess, and all you want to do is push us in deeper. What’s wrong with you people!? -- Jay]

Talking about how to organize our departure is almost as destructive as leaving would be. As long as we keep talking about removing ourselves from the picture in Iraq the local politicians will spend all their energies preparing for the full-blown civil war that will follow our departure.

We can't build Iraqi security forces if the Iraqis see those forces as assets to be secured for use in the coming civil war. We can't terminate troublemakers like Moqtada al Sadr if the powers that be are planning to rely on him for support when we depart. We can't even keep the Shiite dominated Iraqi government from gravitating toward Iran, which will remain in the region long after we go home.

If we want Iraqi partners to help us install and maintain a useful government in Baghdad we have to offer them something more than a one night stand. If we aren't committed to them they won't be committed to us and we won't be able to move forward together.

We are stuck in Iraq and we have to face that fact before we can have any hope of improving the situation there. Increasing our focus on training Iraqis and decreasing our focus on combat operations would be moving in exactly the wrong direction.

The recipe for victory in Iraq is simple. Establish that we are in charge there by killing a great many more people. [Does it matter whom we kill? Probably not. BTW, I guarantee you the author sings religious hymns on Sundays, and considers himself a “nice guy.” Simply put, slaughtering thousands of brown-skinned non-Christians half a world away just doesn’t factor into his f-ed up moral calculus; they’re not people like you or I. Neocons are psychopaths. – Jay] This may take more troops. [“May take more troops”?! Try, will take 200,000-400,000 more troops. Or, do you plan on dusting off the tactical nukes to save time? -- Jay] It might just take a shift in emphasis from politics to fighting. Try hard to ensure that the dead are enemies bearing arms, but remember that trying too hard to avoid collateral damage will only guarantee futility and frustration. Stop worrying about hearts and minds. [Stop worrying about morality and common sense, too, apparently. – Jay] As the old saying goes: "when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." Get a good grip and hang on.

Make it clear by word and deed that we anticipate remaining in Iraq until the jihad burns out and the oil runs dry and that, in the mean time, there are strict limits on Iraqi sovereignty. [Empire, anyone? -- Jay]

Building an International Consensus for Stability

The idea that there is a latent consensus for stability in the Middle East that will come to full flower in response to the right "diplomatic offensive" is preposterous. Syria and Iran pine for a stable, democratic Iraq the way farmers pine for drought and investors pine for a stock market crash.

Both countries are actively at war with us. They are killing our soldiers for the purpose of frustrating our Iraqi project. They are supporting terrorist organizations that want to kill Americans and will do so whenever they can manage it. Nations don't go to war when they believe their differences can be adjusted by mutual agreement. Once the fighting starts the parties don't have much to discuss until one side is beaten and sues for peace. No matter how you dress it up, asking Syria and Iran to help us retreat from Iraq would be capitulation.

The ISG report recommends a particularly cowardly and dishonorable surrender. It says that "the New Diplomatic Offensive" can only succeed if we move to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict. It suggests we do this by convening yet another conference to negotiate "a final peace settlement . . . which would address borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return, and the end of the conflict."

To translate from the arcane language of diplomacy, this means that we should persuade Israel to commit national suicide by disposing of all it's geographic buffers and opening its borders to a flood of hostile Arab immigrants. The upshot of any comprehensive "peace" deal Arabs would accept is perfectly predictable. Israel would cease to exist and millions of Jews would be murdered.

For sixty years the Muslim world has demonstrated over and over again that it does not and will not accept Israel's existence. Arabs will only accept a negotiated settlement if it advances their goal of destroying Israel and completing Hitler's final solution. James Baker and his cohorts know this; every sentient being on the planet knows it.

Talk of convening a peace conference to discuss a "Palestinian" right of return serves only one purpose. It tempts our Arab enemies to help us, at least in the short term, in exchange for the suggestion that we will aid and abet a second Holocaust. Baker and company would have been right at home in the Cliveden set.

Nobody connected with the ISG had the wit to see that if we serve Israel up to the Muslims as an appetizer we are sure to be the main course. Think about that next time you are tempted to feel any confidence in our political class.

We need to convince Iran and Syria to stop interfering in Iraq, but diplomacy has no chance of doing the job. On the contrary, suggesting that we should talk to them as part of the cure for our troubles in Iraq is like prescribing a large dose of Draino for an upset stomach. Syria and Iran are fighting us in Iraq because they believe we are too foolish and naive to fight back effectively. Along come the dotards of the ISG to demonstrate that we are even more foolish and naive than they could previously have imagined.

The only thing that might constrain Syria and Iran is fear of American power. The mullahs in Tehran and the eye doctor in Damascus need to see some tangible evidence that we are willing to crush them if they make themselves too inconvenient. If we reward them for killing our soldiers with a "New Diplomatic Offensive" they will only be inspired to kill more.

How could a bipartisan panel of elder statesmen suggest something as moronic (and oxymoronic) as a "diplomatic offensive" to cover our retreat from Iraq? Even making due allowance for senility, it boggles the mind. [What good has diplomacy ever done anybody? Let’s dynamite the State Department so those traitorous peaceniks can’t forestall any more useful wars. F-ing pacifists! -- Jay]

James Baker and his over the hill gang are disconnected from reality as only VIP's can be. There is an international guild of self-important blowhards with members in every country. The members have a great deal in common with one another even though their countries do not. They are chauffeured about in similar vehicles and go to the same tailors in London. Naturally they tend to believe that the solution to any dispute between nations lies in getting the right self-important blowhards together to talk things out over a good meal.

This isn't a new phenomenon. Richard I struck up an improbable friendship with Saladin during the third Crusade. At one point he tried to resolve the dispute between Christendom and Islam by agreeing to marry his widowed sister Joanna to Saladin's brother Saphadin and set them up as joint monarchs of Jerusalem with guaranteed access to the holy sites for Christian pilgrims.

Apparently it never occurred to Richard that the gap between his people and Saladin's was much too wide to be bridged by a simple dynastic marriage. Saladin seemed to him like a decent guy and he thought they could do business. Joanna knew better. She flatly refused to marry outside her faith and the Church supported her. Richard had to sail for home with a brief truce instead of a grand bargain.

Richard was too self-important to grasp the limits of his own power to arrange things. The ISG has all the self-importance without any of the lion's heart.

We don't really need much from our leaders right now. They would be capable of dealing with our present situation if only they could recognize a war when they see one, distinguish enemies from friends and understand that you win a war by killing enemies.

This isn't a lot to ask, but it is vastly more than our political class seems capable of delivering.

]

J. Peter Mulhern is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/the_iraq_study_group_flunks.html at December 09, 2006 - 09:44:33 AM EST

[Well, there you have it folks, the ultra-conservative alternative to Bush’s big failure in Iraq: COLOSSAL failure resulting in millions of deaths throughout the whole Mideast; and the substitution of American ideals with 19^th century British-style imperial-colonial rule. – Jay]

ISG recommends renewing "white [American] man's burden"

On the one hand, the ISG came to a perfectly logical conclusion: to increase U.S. chances of success in future Iraq-like endeavors, all manner of U.S. domestic civil servants should bring their knowledge and experience to bear.

On the other hand, it's the makings (or re-making) of an imperial civil service. The British Empire already perfected this.

The point is, we should avoid complex and daunting nation-building adventures in the first place! America is not willing to do all of the brutal, nasty tasks required of an Empire, which go hand-in-hand with all the "altruistic" aims of bringing civilization to backwards and underdeveloped nations, which never invited our "help" in the first place.

To implement this part of the ISG recommendations would require overwhelming U.S. force (which would be impossible for us to muster) to take control of the security situation, and install an interim U.S. friendly government -- of course unelected.

What bothers me is that colonial powers have already tried this. It can work, but it requires lots of killing and political repression to keep the native population under control.

Before we head down this road, we should ask ourselves: who were really trying to help, them or us? at what cost? and is this really what America is all about?

I fear that George Bush has set the tone and terms of the debate for so long, that people are losing sight of the big picture. We could conquer Iraq and lose ourselves in the process.

Are we returning to the notion of the "white man's burden"?

Bipartisan panel urges agencies to order civilians to Iraq

By Tom Shoop
tshoop@govexec.com

With the situation in Iraq "grave and deteriorating," the United States must begin the process of shifting troops out of the country, members of a bipartisan panel said Wednesday. But at the same time, the group recommended, the Bush administration must make sure that it has sufficient civilian personnel in Iraq -- if necessary, by ordering some employees to serve there.
"The nature of the mission in Iraq is unfamiliar and dangerous, and the United States has had great difficulty filling civilian assignments in Iraq with sufficient numbers of properly trained personnel at the appropriate rank," wrote members of the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker II and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., in their report. For example, panel members said, the United States still has "far too few Arab language-proficient" officials in the country.
To address the problem, the group recommended that the secretaries of State and Defense and the Director of National Intelligence put the "highest possible priority" on language and cultural training for military personnel and civilian employees about to be assigned to Iraq. And, the report said, if not enough of the latter group volunteer to go to the country, "civilian agencies must fill those positions with directed assignments."
If agencies do so, the panel recommended, the federal government should take steps to address employees' financial hardships resulting from service in Iraq, such as providing the same tax breaks military personnel stationed in the country receive.
The Iraq Study Group, launched earlier this year under the auspices of the United States Institute of Peace, also recommended that the Defense, Justice, State and Treasury departments, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development, begin to conduct cross-agency training efforts to prepare for complex operations such as those in Iraq. Those efforts, the group said, should be modeled on the joint training exercises conducted by the military services since the passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act.
In a separate recommendation, the panel said the State Department should create a Foreign Service Reserve Corps with personnel who could provide "surge capacity" to deal with future stability operations. Other departments, such as Agriculture, Justice and Treasury, should develop similar capacities, panel members said.

This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1206/120606ts2.htm