Friday, January 16, 2004
The founding fathers of the "Liberal Hawks Club" are having an incredibly important conversation on Slate. Check back daily for updates:
From: Fareed Zakaria
To: Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Kenneth M. Pollack, and Jacob Weisberg
Subject: Changing the Middle East
Thursday, Jan. 15, 2004, at 7:48 AM PT
Since this is my first post I want to address Jacob's central question, that Fred and George have pressed so effectively. Given the costs, was the war worth it? I think it was. Many of the costs (ruptured alliances, the postwar mess) can be alleviated (through better planning, diplomacy, etc.). I don't minimize these and have been vocal in pointing them out. But they do not invalidate the entire enterprise.
I've often been associated with the "democratization spillover" argument, so let me point out that the elimination of Saddam Hussein has been a big plus for American national security. The most anti-American and expansionist regime in the Middle East has disappeared. An actual and potential threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait has been eliminated. A violent, rejectionist state has faced consequences. This has had a sobering effect on the region: See Syria and Libya's recent behavior. Given our interest in a stable Middle East, this is good.
Given our growing interest in a more decent Middle East it is even better. For the last few decades we have defined deviancy down in that region. Behavior that would be utterly unacceptable from other countries gets a pass because it's the Middle East. If we learned tomorrow that, say, the Brazilian government was supporting various terror groups, trafficking in chemical and biological agents, and allowing its media to glorify anti-American violence, we would be appalled. When it's Syria we shrug our shoulders and say, "It's the Middle East."
Continue Article
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This is the real connection to 9/11. After 9/11 we came to realize that we couldn't let the Middle East keep festering in its dysfunction and hatreds. It was breeding anti-Americanism and terror. With Iraq in particular, business as usual was becoming increasingly difficult. Throughout this discussion we have assumed that there was a simple, viable alternative to war with Iraq, the continuation of the status-quo, i.e., sanctions plus the almost weekly bombing of the no-fly zones. In fact, that isn't really true. America's Iraq policy was broken. You have to contrast the dangers of acting in Iraq with the dangers of not acting and ask what would things have looked like had we simply kicked this can down the road.
I had been comfortable with the "Saddam-is-in-a-box" argument during the 1990s. But by the latter part of the decade the policy was collapsing. In 1996 Saddam invaded the Kurdish safe haven of northern Iraq, re-establishing his power in the area. In the next few years he repeatedly defied U.N. inspectors and busted sanctions. His neighbors—Jordan, Turkey, Syria—began illicitly trading with him. The French and Russians were openly working to get the sanctions lifted. Saddam adopted an increasingly bold negotiating strategy, refusing or reneging on various compromises that were offered him. In 1998 he stooped cooperating with the inspectors. In November 1999 he stopped exporting oil (under the oil for food program) so that he could send oil prices to their highest levels in a decade. On coming into office, Colin Powell, realizing how ineffective sanctions had become, tried to create a "smart sanctions" program that would target the regime and not the Iraqi people. The French and Russians scuttled it.
So, what we had by 2001 was a policy that was leaving Saddam strong but killing thousands of Iraqi civilians—by one UNICEF estimate over 30,000 a year, of which the majority were children under 5. This was not the containment of the Soviet Union. Iraq had turned into a gangsterland, on its way to becoming a Middle Eastern Chechnya. Its humanitarian crisis was broadcast every day across the Arab world and had enormous popular appeal. That is why, having no love for Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden listed it as one of his three grievances against America in his famous declaration of jihad.
Was a continuation of these trends—collapsing sanctions, total impoverishment, no inspectors, Saddam emboldened, and Iraq as the humanitarian cause of the Arab world—good for American interest and ideals? Particularly after 9/11?
George raises a very important question as to whether war is the best agent for democratization. No, it isn't. But there are certain places where change is unlikely to come from within—anytime soon. In particular in oil-rich countries, there is always enough money to pay the army, the secret police, and the torturers. That's why, over the last three decades, while dictatorships all over the world have tottered and tumbled, not one has fallen in the Arab world. Democracy doesn't always come at the point of a gun, but it often does take outside pressure to topple a bad regime—Germany, Japan, Eastern Europe, South Africa. And while external help can be suspect, sometimes outside pressure can help as it did in East Asia and Latin America.
The eggs are broken. Now we need to make a decent omelet. Of course George is right when he says that to succeed in Iraq we need greater popular legitimacy—and we could have gotten it in various ways. And he's right that democracy-building is long, slow, hard work—I've written much about that myself. I've read his intelligent accounts of all the problems in Iraq today. But would it really be easier to make progress toward a decent society had there been no war? And while I'm as sensitive as anyone to public opinion, please don't take too seriously the howls of Arab intellectuals, people who only a year ago hailed Saddam Hussein as their hero. They are reflections of a broken culture. If the goal is to make them happy, we will never achieve any progress in the Middle East.
The war against Iraq was a tough call. For me there was no single reason that was dispositive. But I believe that political and economic change in the Middle East is vital to tackling the war on terror. That, coupled with the humanitarian crisis, coupled with the security problem that Saddam posed, made me sign on to the war.
Yes, we could have tried to promote reform without a war—and we are. We could have better funded legal exchange programs in Egypt, helped women's education in Jordan, provided economic advice to Qatar—but would it have been an adequate and urgent strategy to address the virus that has infected the Middle East? In Iraq we have the possibility of helping a society break through the barriers of the past and set an example for the future. Of course it may not succeed, and things may not change in that region. Many of the Bush administration postwar mistakes make that outcome more likely. But one thing's for certain: If we hadn't tried, we can be sure that it would not succeed and nothing would change.
From: Fareed Zakaria
To: Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Kenneth M. Pollack, and Jacob Weisberg
Subject: Changing the Middle East
Thursday, Jan. 15, 2004, at 7:48 AM PT
Since this is my first post I want to address Jacob's central question, that Fred and George have pressed so effectively. Given the costs, was the war worth it? I think it was. Many of the costs (ruptured alliances, the postwar mess) can be alleviated (through better planning, diplomacy, etc.). I don't minimize these and have been vocal in pointing them out. But they do not invalidate the entire enterprise.
I've often been associated with the "democratization spillover" argument, so let me point out that the elimination of Saddam Hussein has been a big plus for American national security. The most anti-American and expansionist regime in the Middle East has disappeared. An actual and potential threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait has been eliminated. A violent, rejectionist state has faced consequences. This has had a sobering effect on the region: See Syria and Libya's recent behavior. Given our interest in a stable Middle East, this is good.
Given our growing interest in a more decent Middle East it is even better. For the last few decades we have defined deviancy down in that region. Behavior that would be utterly unacceptable from other countries gets a pass because it's the Middle East. If we learned tomorrow that, say, the Brazilian government was supporting various terror groups, trafficking in chemical and biological agents, and allowing its media to glorify anti-American violence, we would be appalled. When it's Syria we shrug our shoulders and say, "It's the Middle East."
Continue Article
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the real connection to 9/11. After 9/11 we came to realize that we couldn't let the Middle East keep festering in its dysfunction and hatreds. It was breeding anti-Americanism and terror. With Iraq in particular, business as usual was becoming increasingly difficult. Throughout this discussion we have assumed that there was a simple, viable alternative to war with Iraq, the continuation of the status-quo, i.e., sanctions plus the almost weekly bombing of the no-fly zones. In fact, that isn't really true. America's Iraq policy was broken. You have to contrast the dangers of acting in Iraq with the dangers of not acting and ask what would things have looked like had we simply kicked this can down the road.
I had been comfortable with the "Saddam-is-in-a-box" argument during the 1990s. But by the latter part of the decade the policy was collapsing. In 1996 Saddam invaded the Kurdish safe haven of northern Iraq, re-establishing his power in the area. In the next few years he repeatedly defied U.N. inspectors and busted sanctions. His neighbors—Jordan, Turkey, Syria—began illicitly trading with him. The French and Russians were openly working to get the sanctions lifted. Saddam adopted an increasingly bold negotiating strategy, refusing or reneging on various compromises that were offered him. In 1998 he stooped cooperating with the inspectors. In November 1999 he stopped exporting oil (under the oil for food program) so that he could send oil prices to their highest levels in a decade. On coming into office, Colin Powell, realizing how ineffective sanctions had become, tried to create a "smart sanctions" program that would target the regime and not the Iraqi people. The French and Russians scuttled it.
So, what we had by 2001 was a policy that was leaving Saddam strong but killing thousands of Iraqi civilians—by one UNICEF estimate over 30,000 a year, of which the majority were children under 5. This was not the containment of the Soviet Union. Iraq had turned into a gangsterland, on its way to becoming a Middle Eastern Chechnya. Its humanitarian crisis was broadcast every day across the Arab world and had enormous popular appeal. That is why, having no love for Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden listed it as one of his three grievances against America in his famous declaration of jihad.
Was a continuation of these trends—collapsing sanctions, total impoverishment, no inspectors, Saddam emboldened, and Iraq as the humanitarian cause of the Arab world—good for American interest and ideals? Particularly after 9/11?
George raises a very important question as to whether war is the best agent for democratization. No, it isn't. But there are certain places where change is unlikely to come from within—anytime soon. In particular in oil-rich countries, there is always enough money to pay the army, the secret police, and the torturers. That's why, over the last three decades, while dictatorships all over the world have tottered and tumbled, not one has fallen in the Arab world. Democracy doesn't always come at the point of a gun, but it often does take outside pressure to topple a bad regime—Germany, Japan, Eastern Europe, South Africa. And while external help can be suspect, sometimes outside pressure can help as it did in East Asia and Latin America.
The eggs are broken. Now we need to make a decent omelet. Of course George is right when he says that to succeed in Iraq we need greater popular legitimacy—and we could have gotten it in various ways. And he's right that democracy-building is long, slow, hard work—I've written much about that myself. I've read his intelligent accounts of all the problems in Iraq today. But would it really be easier to make progress toward a decent society had there been no war? And while I'm as sensitive as anyone to public opinion, please don't take too seriously the howls of Arab intellectuals, people who only a year ago hailed Saddam Hussein as their hero. They are reflections of a broken culture. If the goal is to make them happy, we will never achieve any progress in the Middle East.
The war against Iraq was a tough call. For me there was no single reason that was dispositive. But I believe that political and economic change in the Middle East is vital to tackling the war on terror. That, coupled with the humanitarian crisis, coupled with the security problem that Saddam posed, made me sign on to the war.
Yes, we could have tried to promote reform without a war—and we are. We could have better funded legal exchange programs in Egypt, helped women's education in Jordan, provided economic advice to Qatar—but would it have been an adequate and urgent strategy to address the virus that has infected the Middle East? In Iraq we have the possibility of helping a society break through the barriers of the past and set an example for the future. Of course it may not succeed, and things may not change in that region. Many of the Bush administration postwar mistakes make that outcome more likely. But one thing's for certain: If we hadn't tried, we can be sure that it would not succeed and nothing would change.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
War of Ideas, Part 3
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
During the next six months, the world is going to be treated to two remarkable trials in Baghdad. It is going to be the mother of all split screens. On one side, you're going to see the trial of Saddam Hussein. On the other side, you're going to see the trial of the Iraqi people. That's right, the Iraqi people will also be on trial — for whether they can really live together without the iron fist of the man on the other side of the screen.
This may be apocryphal, but Saddam is supposed to have once remarked something like: Be careful, if you get rid of me, you will need seven presidents to rule Iraq. Which is why this split-screen trial is going to be so important. Either Saddam is going to be laughing at us and at Iraqis, saying "I told you so," as Iraqis are squabbling and murdering each other on the other side of the screen.
Or, we and the Iraqi people will be laughing at him by proving that it is possible to produce something the Arab world has rarely seen: a self-governing, multiethnic, representative Arab government that accepts minority rights and peaceful transfers of power — without a military dictator, monarch or mullah standing overhead with a stick.
You don't want to miss this show. This is pay-per-view history. If, somehow, Iraqi Kurds, Sunnis, Turkmen, Christians, Assyrians and Shiites find a way to embrace pluralism, it will be a huge boost to moderates in the war of ideas all across the Muslim world. Those who scoff at the idea of a democratic domino theory in the Arab world don't know what they're talking about. But those who think this is a done deal don't know Iraq.
If Iraq is going to be made to work as a decent, pluralistic, self-governing entity, noted the Iraq expert Amatzia Baram of the United States Institute of Peace, all the key factions there will have to accept being "reasonably unhappy." All will have to settle for their second-best dream in order to avoid their first-class nightmare: chaos or a return to tyranny.
Islamists will have to accept being unhappy that the system does not mandate Sharia law as the constitution, but only "reasonably" unhappy, because Islam will be the official religion of the state and respected as an important basis for legislation and governance. Secularists will have to accept being unhappy that Iraq's new basic law gives Islam an important symbolic place in governance, but only "reasonably" unhappy, because this secular law and judges will still provide the basis for a new rule of law. Kurds will have to accept being very unhappy not to achieve their dream of an independent Kurdistan, but only "reasonably" unhappy, because the special autonomous status of the Kurdish region will be concretized in Iraqi law.
The Sunnis will have to accept being unhappy that they are no longer controlling Iraq and its oil wealth, but only "reasonably" unhappy, because they will discover that they still have a significant role in the parliament, and a share of the nation's oil wealth in their own provinces, thanks to the new Iraqi federalism. The Shiites will be unhappy that, now when their majority political status will finally be realized, power and resources are going to be diffused throughout a federal system and constraints are going to be placed on the power of the majority. But they will only have to be "reasonably" unhappy, because there will eventually be a Shiite head of government, and the very federalism that disperses power and resources will also enable Shiite provinces that wish to adopt a more Islamist form of government to do so.
"Let us put aside the literary phrase `We are brothers but others are dividing us,' " wrote the thoughtful Arab columnist Hazem Saghieh in Al Hayat. "We in Iraq and elsewhere are not brothers — there are problems we inherited from our own history and social makeup, which were not helped by oppressive modern regimes. . . . Let's be frank: the Shiites today scare the Sunnis; the Sunnis and the Shiites together scare the Kurds; and the Kurds scare the other minorities. . . . All the ethnic groups of Iraq have the responsibility of putting nation-building above their selfish and conflicting calculations."
In short, our most serious long-term enemy in Iraq may not be the Iraqi insurgents, but the Iraqi people. Can they live together reasonably unhappy at first, and then grow reasonably happy? If they can, we will be Iraq's temporary midwife, helping give birth to its democracy. If they can't, we will be Iraq's new, always unhappy, baby sitter, and the old one, Saddam Hussein, will be laughing at us all the way to the gallows.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
During the next six months, the world is going to be treated to two remarkable trials in Baghdad. It is going to be the mother of all split screens. On one side, you're going to see the trial of Saddam Hussein. On the other side, you're going to see the trial of the Iraqi people. That's right, the Iraqi people will also be on trial — for whether they can really live together without the iron fist of the man on the other side of the screen.
This may be apocryphal, but Saddam is supposed to have once remarked something like: Be careful, if you get rid of me, you will need seven presidents to rule Iraq. Which is why this split-screen trial is going to be so important. Either Saddam is going to be laughing at us and at Iraqis, saying "I told you so," as Iraqis are squabbling and murdering each other on the other side of the screen.
Or, we and the Iraqi people will be laughing at him by proving that it is possible to produce something the Arab world has rarely seen: a self-governing, multiethnic, representative Arab government that accepts minority rights and peaceful transfers of power — without a military dictator, monarch or mullah standing overhead with a stick.
You don't want to miss this show. This is pay-per-view history. If, somehow, Iraqi Kurds, Sunnis, Turkmen, Christians, Assyrians and Shiites find a way to embrace pluralism, it will be a huge boost to moderates in the war of ideas all across the Muslim world. Those who scoff at the idea of a democratic domino theory in the Arab world don't know what they're talking about. But those who think this is a done deal don't know Iraq.
If Iraq is going to be made to work as a decent, pluralistic, self-governing entity, noted the Iraq expert Amatzia Baram of the United States Institute of Peace, all the key factions there will have to accept being "reasonably unhappy." All will have to settle for their second-best dream in order to avoid their first-class nightmare: chaos or a return to tyranny.
Islamists will have to accept being unhappy that the system does not mandate Sharia law as the constitution, but only "reasonably" unhappy, because Islam will be the official religion of the state and respected as an important basis for legislation and governance. Secularists will have to accept being unhappy that Iraq's new basic law gives Islam an important symbolic place in governance, but only "reasonably" unhappy, because this secular law and judges will still provide the basis for a new rule of law. Kurds will have to accept being very unhappy not to achieve their dream of an independent Kurdistan, but only "reasonably" unhappy, because the special autonomous status of the Kurdish region will be concretized in Iraqi law.
The Sunnis will have to accept being unhappy that they are no longer controlling Iraq and its oil wealth, but only "reasonably" unhappy, because they will discover that they still have a significant role in the parliament, and a share of the nation's oil wealth in their own provinces, thanks to the new Iraqi federalism. The Shiites will be unhappy that, now when their majority political status will finally be realized, power and resources are going to be diffused throughout a federal system and constraints are going to be placed on the power of the majority. But they will only have to be "reasonably" unhappy, because there will eventually be a Shiite head of government, and the very federalism that disperses power and resources will also enable Shiite provinces that wish to adopt a more Islamist form of government to do so.
"Let us put aside the literary phrase `We are brothers but others are dividing us,' " wrote the thoughtful Arab columnist Hazem Saghieh in Al Hayat. "We in Iraq and elsewhere are not brothers — there are problems we inherited from our own history and social makeup, which were not helped by oppressive modern regimes. . . . Let's be frank: the Shiites today scare the Sunnis; the Sunnis and the Shiites together scare the Kurds; and the Kurds scare the other minorities. . . . All the ethnic groups of Iraq have the responsibility of putting nation-building above their selfish and conflicting calculations."
In short, our most serious long-term enemy in Iraq may not be the Iraqi insurgents, but the Iraqi people. Can they live together reasonably unhappy at first, and then grow reasonably happy? If they can, we will be Iraq's temporary midwife, helping give birth to its democracy. If they can't, we will be Iraq's new, always unhappy, baby sitter, and the old one, Saddam Hussein, will be laughing at us all the way to the gallows.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Weapons of Misperception
Kenneth M. Pollack, the author of "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong," explains how the road to war with Iraq was paved with misleading and manipulated intelligence.
.....
n March of 2003, when America entered into war against Iraq, did Saddam Hussein pose an imminent threat? Theories about this question abound, but the tide of opinion is turning toward "no." As months go by with little sign of any weapons of mass destruction, and as new evidence surfaces that the Bush Administration relied on false or manipulated intelligence to support its objectives, the reasoning behind America's assault on Iraq is increasingly coming to seem less sound. Even Kenneth Pollack, whose influential book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (2002) swayed a number of officials to join the call for war, has now amended his stance regarding Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction. In "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong" (March Atlantic) he argues that Saddam most likely scaled back his weapons programs in 1996—keeping only the minimum amount of material necessary to restart the programs at some point in the future—and that the threat Saddam posed was likely far less dire than most imagined.
Based on a review of the available information and on his knowledge from time spent as an analyst for the CIA and as a member of the National Security Council for two terms, Pollack now believes that experts and observers the world over were seriously mistaken regarding Iraq. After a period in 1994-1995 during which key discoveries, defections, and disclosures revealed the extent of Iraq's continued efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction, Saddam may have recognized the degree to which those programs were hindering his efforts to get sanctions lifted. At this point, Pollack argues, Saddam likely reduced his programs and destroyed his weapons, retaining only a very limited research-and-development capability while ensuring that teams of scientists were kept together, in anticipation of one day restarting the programs.
If this is indeed what happened, how did the world, and particularly the world's top intelligence agencies, miss such a crucial turn of events? The simple answer, Pollack suggests, is that we never considered the possibility. The intelligence community made what might be called an "informed misperception"—based on what was known about Saddam, it was reasonable to assume that he would never willingly give up his weapons. After Saddam expelled the UN inspectors from Iraq in 1998, any information the intelligence agencies received was colored by the unchecked belief that Saddam would continue to pursue weapons whatever the cost. Without inspectors on the ground, the agencies were forced to rely more heavily on defectors' reports for information on Saddam's programs—many of which now seem to be false.
Pollack does not suggest, however, that the seemingly false pretenses under which the U.S. entered Iraq were all, or even mostly, the intelligence community's fault. His most scathing criticism falls on the Bush Administration and, particularly, its tendency to misstate the facts of the case when trying to persuade the country to go to war. In his eyes, the Administration consistently engaged in "creative omission," overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had evidence to the contrary. "The President is responsible for serving the entire nation," Pollack writes. "Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the U.S. government—and withholding or downplaying some of that information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility."
Kenneth Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He was an Iran-Iraq military analyst for the CIA, and the director of Persian Gulf Affairs and Near East and South Asian Affairs for the National Security Council.
We spoke by telephone on December 30.
—Elizabeth Shelburne
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In your piece, "Spies, Lies and Weapons," you argue that we fundamentally misjudged Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program—that, in fact, he had scaled his programs back to the point of almost nonexistence. Can you talk a little bit about why you think this?
For this article, I went back over the evidence that we had throughout the 1980s and 1990s and compared it with the information that is starting to trickle out of Iraq—such as what has been learned in the debriefings of Iraq scientists, what David Kay, of the Iraqi Survey Group, and his team have found, and other pieces of information that have surfaced. Prior to 1996, it looks like Saddam was trying to hold on to the maximum amount of his programs that he could. He was certainly trying to maintain a major research-and-development capability, and also a production capability that would allow him to reconstitute his WMD arsenal at any time, should he have chosen to do so. In this 1995-1996 time frame, it seems that Saddam realized that this effort was becoming counterproductive. More and more of it was being discovered by the United Nations. Hussein Kamel, his son-in-law and the head of the WMD programs, defected to the West, which caused the Iraqis to turn over huge amounts of documents. As a result of that whole fiasco, the UNSCOM inspectors learned a tremendous amount about the Iraqi efforts to conceal the WMD programs. There were a number of other important discoveries during that time. All of this made it almost impossible to get the sanctions lifted, which was, of course, Saddam's primary goal. So, it seems to have been the case that probably in 1996, Saddam made an important decision. He shifted from trying to maintain the maximum possible WMD programs to simply trying to maintain the minimum necessary to, at some point in the future, reconstitute them after the sanctions were lifted.
You mention that this widespread and seemingly incorrect perception began in the late 1990s, predating the current Bush Administration. You also mention that you were surprised during your second stint at the NSC at the dramatic change in the intelligence analysis of Saddam's WMD capabilities. How did the consensus move from being unsure of the presence of WMD in Iraq to being convinced of it?
I and others in the Clinton Administration saw an important change in the U.S. perspective on Iraq's WMD. In the mid-1990s, the intelligence community was convinced that the Iraqis were maintaining WMD capabilities, research and development, productions, and probably some weapons. But there wasn't a tremendous amount of fear because there was a widespread belief that the nuclear program was probably dormant. In the late 1990s, however, there was a tremendous amount of anxiety in the intelligence community, because there was a belief that the nuclear program had been reconstituted and that the Iraqis were making much greater progress in acquiring a nuclear weapon than they had before. As best I can tell, this change in belief was because of a combination of factors.
Probably the most important of these was the loss of the UN inspectors. At the time, obviously, we knew that losing the UN inspectors would be losing an important piece of the intelligence puzzle; but I don't think anyone realized just how big a piece that was. The UN inspectors had a tremendous capacity to watch what the Iraqis were doing. They were on the ground in Iraq; they had access to sights that neither U.S. intelligence nor any other intelligence service had; they were constantly speaking to Iraqis; they had a very large team that did nothing but try to check every jot and tittle of every document that the Iraqis presented. They had a tremendous collection capability and a tremendous analytic capability against Iraq. When the inspectors were pulled out, all that was lost.
There were also other important elements of what the UNSCOM inspectors did that were extremely important. For example, when a Western intelligence agency received a report—usually from a human source, but sometimes from a technical one—that suggested that there was WMD activity at a particular location, you could give that to the UNSCOM inspectors and they would go and check it out. They would come back and say, "Here's what we found. We found this, but we didn't find that." Or, "Yeah, something suspicious is maybe going on." Or sometimes, "it looked completely clean to us." If nothing else, this was a very good way of establishing on-the-ground truth about the different facilities. It was also an important source of reassurance, especially on the nuclear front. Since it's hard to keep a nuclear program secret, you could send the UNSCOM inspectors to certain places. They could bring their technical instruments and determine if there was radioactive material at the facility. UNSCOM activities were a very important check on things.
When the inspectors left Iraq, however, and that capability was lost, all of a sudden you lost 90 percent of your ability to collect intelligence on Iraq's WMD programs. You had no independent or, for lack of a better term, objective way of vetting reports. In addition, because you weren't getting information from the inspectors to begin with, the Western intelligence agencies became desperate for information. They started to look much harder at defector reporting.
In the late 1990s, you had more defectors coming out of Iraq who were telling the intelligence communities all kinds of very disconcerting things about progress that the Iraqis were making. In retrospect, many of the reports seem very questionable. Many of them indicated that the Iraqis were reconstituting their nuclear program, were making much greater progress on biological weapons, were doing very aggressive research and development, and had restarted production facilities. All of these are things that the U.S. has yet to actually find concrete evidence of in Iraq. But, because you didn't have UNSCOM around, this was really the only information out there. The loss of the inspectors meant that the intelligence community came to rely more and more heavily on the defectors' reports and had less and less ability to actually check on their truthfulness.
So then, this belief that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program came from defector reports?
By and large, yes.
It's surprising to me that there wasn't a move to put some sort of more rigorous questioning or internal vetting into place. Was there no movement toward that in the CIA or other intelligence organizations?
The intelligence agencies did vet these defectors as well as they possibly could. They actually disregarded the reports of many of the defectors who came out of Iraq. There were all kinds of people coming out of Iraq, with all kinds of wild stories about what Saddam was up to. Some of those reports were discounted entirely because the intelligence community didn't trust the people. My guess is that only a quarter to a third of the defector reporting was ever believed. It's just that at the moment, given what we've found in Iraq, it looks like even that number was too high.
Part of the problem is trying to establish the reliability of a source. If somebody claims to be a nuclear physicist, what do they know about nuclear physics? You also want to ask about whether the information they're providing matches up with other sources. In an ideal world, you'd like to be able to compare the reporting of a defector against things that you absolutely know to be true. The inspectors gave that kind of credibility.
Were there people in the intelligence agencies who said, we just don't have enough information to have an opinion or to be able to ascertain what the true story is?
Certainly some people were more cautious than others. A very good example of that is the State Department's intelligence shop, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which is referred to as INR. INR dissented on the reconstitution of Iraq's nuclear program. They felt the evidence was not persuasive enough.
A couple of things are worth keeping in mind here. The first is that, in 1991, the entire U.S. intelligence community had been fooled by Iraq—in the other way. The Iraqis had a massive nuclear-weapons program and were much closer to a weapon than anyone had suspected. At that time, INR was the worst about saying that the Iraqis had absolutely nothing. In fact, INR refused to concede that the Iraqis even had a nuclear-weapons program at all. So this time around, the idea that INR was again the one saying that the Iraqis weren't threatening—didn't have a program—and that everything was dormant, just seemed like more of the same. In some cases, it was literally the same analysts at INR who had made the judgment in 1991 that proved to be so horribly wrong. Because of this, a lot of people in the intelligence community simply discounted them. Their feeling was that INR never thinks the Iraqis have nuclear weapons. They were wrong last time and they are wrong this time.
The context of all this is actually an important second element of this story. It is important to remember the mindset of most analysts on Iraq. The Iraqis had a track record; they had consistently demonstrated that they were absolutely determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction. If my analysis is correct and they shifted over to dismantling their WMD programs in 1996, that would be the first time that they really broke from the past pattern.
The fact that we didn't have very good information this time was not an obvious signal that he was doing something different and had chosen to disband many of the programs. It seemed simply to be a sign that he had gotten even better at hiding them from us. Of course, it is important to remember that what we have found in Iraq does indicate that the Iraqis were retaining programs. It is not the case the Iraqis dismantled everything—it's just that they dismantled most. What they kept was only a residual element that would enable them to reconstitute at some point in the future. The weapons were clearly much less threatening than the U.S. intelligence believed them to be, but it's not as if they didn't have any WMD programs at all.
You too were a believer in the idea that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. How did that happen and on what evidence did you come to that conclusion?
My evidence came straight from the intelligence community. As an analyst at the CIA and as a member of the NSC when Hussein Kamel defected, everything I saw indicated that the Iraqis still had these programs. When I went back to the NSC in the late 1990s, I was simply relying on the intelligence community to tell me what the right answer was. I did not simply accept their judgment uncritically, however. I did press them, and I asked them why they thought what they thought. They seemed to have reasonable answers and sources out there. I pressed them on why they believed their sources, and they responded with what seemed like a reasonable set of suppositions. I was certainly not alone in this—this was a consensus among the U.S. government, it was a consensus among the UN inspectors, it was a consensus of American experts outside the U.S. government. In fact, it was a consensus in the entire international community.
It's important to remember that any intelligence service or country with the ability to monitor Iraq and its weapons programs—Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Israel—was a hundred percent certain that Saddam had these programs. There may have been some debate over just how aggressive they were or how far along they were. The Germans were the most alarmist of all on the subject of a nuclear weapon. They thought the Iraqis might have one in as little as two or three years. Our own intelligence community tended to be a little more conservative; they thought it was more like four to six years away—or five to seven. But no one doubted that Saddam had these weapons.
Your book, The Threatening Storm, argued that we would eventually have to go to war in order to remove Saddam and keep him from acquiring nuclear weapons. The book was said to have been very useful to the Bush Administration in the run-up to war. Can you tell me how and why it was helpful? Was the book's argument ever misrepresented?
I think there were a lot of people who did nothing but read the subtitle to the book, which was The Case for Invading Iraq. I made it very clear that while I did have one belief in common with Bush Administration, which was that it would eventually be necessary to go to war to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, I had very different ideas about why the war was necessary, how it should be fought, and what the United States needed to do to deal with all the unintended consequences that might result. For example, I never believed that it was necessary for the United States to go to war as early as 2003. I did not believe the threat was imminent.
I also thought that it was critical for the United States to do a whole bunch of important things first. We needed to deal with the war on terrorism, get the Middle East peace process back on track, and develop a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of Iraq. All of these were major sections in my book. The case I made for war was very different from the case the Bush Administration made for war. There was a lot in my book that would be critical of the Bush Administration's actual run-up to war and that argued against the arguments that the Bush Administration were making.
So then, in some ways, your argument was misrepresented?
I certainly can't point to any Bush Administration official who held up my book and misrepresented it. But it certainly was the case that a lot of people misunderstood what my case for war was. In fact, my case for war was as much a critique of the Bush Administration and an argument against what the Bush Administration was doing as it was an argument for it. One of my most important points was that going to war was a potentially very messy undertaking that had all kinds of big problems associated with it. I argued that it was critical, therefore, that the United States do everything it could to prevent those unforeseen, potential problems from arising before we went to war. If we didn't, we would just end up substituting one set of problems for another.
And would you say that's come to pass?
Certainly we have created a whole lot of problems that we didn't need to. Two of them come to mind. One, I think that clearly we should have and could have done a much better job planning for post-war reconstruction. Of course, the wonderful companion piece by James Fallows points out that there was a tremendous amount of good planning that was going on within the U.S. government, but that it was the hubris of certain other individuals within the government that caused us to simply disregard all those plans. My own perspective and the one you get from reading Jim's piece is that the vast majority of problems that we are currently experiencing in post-war Iraq were entirely avoidable. This did not need to be as messy, as dangerous, as deadly, and as expensive as it has proved to be.
Another problem is that many of the troubles we are experiencing in the Middle East are the result of the Administration's absolute unwillingness to engage in the Middle East peace process before going to war with Iraq. Their argument was always that the road to Jerusalem ran through Baghdad. My argument was the exact opposite—the road to Baghdad needed to run through Jerusalem. That wasn't to say that you needed a peace agreement before you could go to war with Saddam Hussein. I thought that was unlikely and unnecessary. But we did need to get the negotiations back on track. I think we could have avoided a lot of the violence, tension, and animosities in the Middle East today if we'd pursued that route rather than the one we did.
You mention that you saw an earlier generation of analysts mistakenly assess the progress Saddam had made on a nuclear weapon before 1991. Looking back, did you see any of the same mistakes being made by analysts from the late nineties until the war albeit in the other direction?
In both cases, the analysts had a certain set of preconceptions. This is always the case and is inevitable in analysis work. Having been an analyst myself, I don't say it as a judgment against analysts—that somehow they were not doing their job. Analysts always have to examine their assumptions, but you wouldn't be a human being if you didn't have a set of them. To be honest, you wouldn't be a very good analyst if you didn't have them. You have to have a theory about what is going on when you go in. You have to be willing to challenge the theory and be willing to change it when there is disconfirming evidence, but you have to have some kind of overarching theory.
Before 1991, the theory of the technical analysts was that the Iraqis were not very good at things, they were terribly inefficient, their scientists weren't very skilled or knowledgeable—it was a Third World country that really didn't have the capability to build a nuclear weapon. In particular, one of the problems was that many of these analysts were mirror imaging, which is a tremendous problem in Western analysis of the Middle East. It's analysts saying, If we were them, this is the way we would do it. The problem is, of course, that we aren't them and they don't do things the way we would.
In 1991, we found that they had taken a number of different routes, many of which were much cruder than the ones we would have used. In some cases, they were using technology that was considered obsolete, but that nevertheless was perfectly useful. One of the most important methods that they were using to enrich uranium was one of the methods that the United States had used during World War II. That has been superseded many times over, so the assumption was that nobody would do it that way now. But if you were a country that didn't have the technology, resources, and skill, maybe you would do it that way. Nobody was thinking about it in those terms.
This time around, in the late 1990s, the assumptions were much better founded. The assumptions were that Saddam Hussein is absolutely determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons. That set of assumptions clearly colored judgments on everything else. If someone came out and said, "Saddam Hussein has a nuclear bomb," he was more likely to be believed than the person who came out and said, "Saddam has nothing, he doesn't even want a nuclear weapon anymore."
So there would have been very few, if any, people, who ever posited, even as a hypothetical, that Iraq didn't have any imminent WMD programs?
I can't think of anyone who did not believe that the Iraqis had a weapons of mass destruction program. There was simply no one.
Around 1994-1995, UNSCOM inspectors, who had been in the country since 1991, began to think they were done in Iraq—that they had found all the weapons there were to find and that Iraq no longer had any WMD capabilities. You mention that many intelligences agencies disagreed with them. Why did UNSCOM think their job was done? Why did the intelligence services disagree?
UNSCOM inspectors had gone into Iraq and spent two or three years searching around. They thought they'd pretty much gotten everything that was out there. In retrospect, even from the vantage point of 1996, it was clear that the Iraqis had figured out how to fool the UNSCOM inspectors. They had changed the way that they were operating and they were keeping UNSCOM from seeing things. The intelligence services, on the other hand, were getting information that indicated that the inspectors were getting fooled. The analysts had seen the Iraqis do this before and they simply believed that the Iraqis were doing it again.
In this case, they were right. The preconceived notions of the analysts were absolutely correct. It was UNSCOM that was wrong. The Iraqis did still have the programs. All of that came out in the 1995-1996 time frame, when Hussein Kamel defected and there were a series of other revelations where UNSCOM and foreign-intelligence services caught the Iraqis red-handed with SCUD production facilities, a complete biological production facility, all kinds of illegal trades and transactions, and purchases abroad. After this, the inspectors realized how completely wrong they had been—like the saying "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." They really thought they had disarmed the Iraqis. They wanted to transition the files and were actually saying nasty things about the U.S. having an obsession with the Iraqis. After 1995-1996, the inspectors turned 180 degrees. From then on, they too were absolutely convinced that Saddam would stop at nothing to acquire the weapons. They were convinced they had an enormous problem—a problem that would probably never go away as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.
How were they so duped? If they were the only people on the ground, the only ones charged with finding the weapons, how did they get the situation so wrong?
The Iraqis are very good at this sort of thing. They're very good at counterintelligence—they infiltrated the UNSCOM operation, they had agents and friends in all kind of foreign governments who provided them with information and tip-offs regarding UNSCOM. As a result, the UNSCOM people themselves believe that out of 250 no-notice inspections, only six of them ever actually surprised the Iraqis, which is incredible.
Beyond that, they also just took a whole lot of preventative measures. They did bury some stuff, they did break programs up, they did assign personnel to seemingly innocuous programs, such as hoof and mouth vaccines. But they kept whole teams together and they all knew that at some point Saddam would tell them to start working on something like anthrax.
In other cases, they set up completely legitimate facilities, which they knew could some day be transitioned over to making weapons of mass destruction. But for the moment, they were making baby milk or something along those lines.
What did UNSCOM do after 1995-96 to prevent the same thing from happening again?
After 1995-96, UNSCOM was simply much more aggressive in how it went about things. Also, they started with a different set of assumptions. (We're back to these assumptions and why they are important.) They were no longer skeptical of what the U.S. and other intelligence agencies said about Iraq and were no longer agnostic about whether or not the Iraqis had weapons. They became very supportive of Western intelligence agencies and the materials they were finding. They were certain that the Iraqis were hiding things, which caused them to change both their method of operation and their approach to looking for weapons in Iraq.
One of the most important things they did was to go after the concealment mechanism. UNSCOM realized that they might not be able to get at the programs themselves, but they could start by going after the methods and organizations that the Iraqis were using to hide them. They thought if they could get that, then maybe they could get at the weapons themselves. UNSCOM went after them to try to break open Iraq's hidden doors.
You mention that the CIA and other intelligence operations only had meager assets in Iraq. What exactly does "meager assets" mean?
Iraq was an extremely difficult environment for any foreign intelligence agency to operate in. Iraq was a closed, totalitarian society. Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi expatriate, had the wonderful phrase, the Republic of Fear. Saddam had created a Stalinist, self-policing society, where the people were so terrified that every word they uttered was being heard by some Iraqi authority that they just wouldn't say anything.
Foreigners in Iraq were tailed and harassed. In the United States or other parts of the world, they want to keep tabs on those they believe are foreign intelligences operators. But, they do it surreptitiously. In Iraq, it was very clear—you had someone walking fifty feet behind you at all times. If you did anything the Iraqis didn't like, they started harassing you. They'd throw you out of the country, they'd beat you up, they'd break into your home. They would make it very clear that if you kept doing things they didn't want, you could pay a very heavy price for it. They tapped all of the outgoing phone lines and tried to keep tabs on all the communication going into and out of Iraq.
They had an enormous network of informers throughout the country. Most Iraqis believe that in a country of 24 million people, 2 to 4 million of those people were on the payroll of various government organizations. Whether it was true or not doesn't matter. All that mattered was that the Iraqis believed it. They assumed that one out of every four or five people they knew was reporting for the government. In this kind of environment, it is almost impossible for case officers to operate, to recruit Iraqis, to gather information on this society and especially to meet with sensitive personnel. The idea that an Iraqi government official or a scientist would meet with someone connected to the Americans was unheard of. That made it extraordinarily difficult for the United States or any other country to maintain a network of spies inside of Iraq. As a result, there was very little human intelligence that was forthcoming out of Iraq.
So it wasn't that we had made a choice not to devote more assets to Iraq; it's that it was a nearly impossible place for us to devote more assets.
Correct. The CIA and other intelligence agencies devoted tremendous assets to Iraq. It was an extremely high priority, with a real emphasis on trying to collect against Iraq. But it was an extraordinarily difficult target. I think no matter what level of effort we put against it, it was going to be extremely hard.
That said, there are always more resources that can be devoted to a problem. Think about two examples, the first being the Soviet Union. Like Iraq, the Soviet Union was an extremely hard target. Yet the United States turned itself inside out to try to find out what was going on there. We had far more failures than successes, but I think arguably we had better collection against the Soviet Union than we did against Saddam's Iraq.
The second example is terrorism. Before September 11, the United States had a tremendous intelligence effort against terrorism. It was one of our highest priorities, with all kinds of people working on it and huge resources being lavished on it. After September 11, the resources that were lavished on terrorism were expanded exponentially. There are always greater levels you can go to if something is that high a priority. In retrospect, we may have wanted to put even great resources against Iraq. It's hard to fault the U.S. intelligence community for devoting the percentage of its assets that it did, but we might have asked the question, Are we devoting enough to intelligence in general?
You also criticize the Administration for their interpretation of the available intelligence. Would you say they failed the American people?
There are certain members of the Administration who did a disservice to the American people. I don't want to fault the entire Administration, because I think there were a lot of people in the Administration who were saying things that were completely true and what they were doing was completely above-board. But there were others in the Administration who really weren't.
The thing that upset and disappointed me the most was that there were some Administration officials, and particularly some high Administration officials, who were making statements that weren't the whole truth. The one thing for which I can find no excuse is this question of not telling the American people the whole truth. The nuclear issue is the most important example of this. The judgment of the intelligence community, expressed in a number of written documents, some of which have been made public, was that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear-weapons programs and that he could possibly acquire a nuclear weapon in one to two years if he managed to get fissile material on the black market. The intelligence community felt that it was much more likely that he would not be able to acquire a nuclear weapon for five to seven years. In making the case for war, a number of high-level officials in the Administration stressed the one-to-two year figure, which made the threat from Iraq seem imminent. The intelligence community couldn't rule it out, but the best judgment was that it was a more distant threat.
I think the Administration was only telling part of the truth to the American people because it was trying to justify a war in 2003. The intelligence estimates just didn't really support that imminence. The Administration could have said, "Look, the intelligence community thinks it may be five to seven years away, but they do think it's also possible that they could get it in one to two years. After 9/11, we shouldn't take even that kind of a risk." I think that would have been a much more honest way of presenting it to the American people.
But it might not have resulted in going to war.
That is my sense. My sense is that the Administration recognized that that kind of argument would not generate the same enthusiasm for a war in 2003 as the argument the way they cast it did. As far as I'm concerned, these are not political arguments. This is an argument about U.S. national security and about going to war. That's supposed to transcend politics. Of course, I've lived in Washington long enough to know that it's rare that national security actually does end up transcending politics—but that doesn't make it right.
Kenneth M. Pollack, the author of "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong," explains how the road to war with Iraq was paved with misleading and manipulated intelligence.
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n March of 2003, when America entered into war against Iraq, did Saddam Hussein pose an imminent threat? Theories about this question abound, but the tide of opinion is turning toward "no." As months go by with little sign of any weapons of mass destruction, and as new evidence surfaces that the Bush Administration relied on false or manipulated intelligence to support its objectives, the reasoning behind America's assault on Iraq is increasingly coming to seem less sound. Even Kenneth Pollack, whose influential book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (2002) swayed a number of officials to join the call for war, has now amended his stance regarding Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction. In "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong" (March Atlantic) he argues that Saddam most likely scaled back his weapons programs in 1996—keeping only the minimum amount of material necessary to restart the programs at some point in the future—and that the threat Saddam posed was likely far less dire than most imagined.
Based on a review of the available information and on his knowledge from time spent as an analyst for the CIA and as a member of the National Security Council for two terms, Pollack now believes that experts and observers the world over were seriously mistaken regarding Iraq. After a period in 1994-1995 during which key discoveries, defections, and disclosures revealed the extent of Iraq's continued efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction, Saddam may have recognized the degree to which those programs were hindering his efforts to get sanctions lifted. At this point, Pollack argues, Saddam likely reduced his programs and destroyed his weapons, retaining only a very limited research-and-development capability while ensuring that teams of scientists were kept together, in anticipation of one day restarting the programs.
If this is indeed what happened, how did the world, and particularly the world's top intelligence agencies, miss such a crucial turn of events? The simple answer, Pollack suggests, is that we never considered the possibility. The intelligence community made what might be called an "informed misperception"—based on what was known about Saddam, it was reasonable to assume that he would never willingly give up his weapons. After Saddam expelled the UN inspectors from Iraq in 1998, any information the intelligence agencies received was colored by the unchecked belief that Saddam would continue to pursue weapons whatever the cost. Without inspectors on the ground, the agencies were forced to rely more heavily on defectors' reports for information on Saddam's programs—many of which now seem to be false.
Pollack does not suggest, however, that the seemingly false pretenses under which the U.S. entered Iraq were all, or even mostly, the intelligence community's fault. His most scathing criticism falls on the Bush Administration and, particularly, its tendency to misstate the facts of the case when trying to persuade the country to go to war. In his eyes, the Administration consistently engaged in "creative omission," overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had evidence to the contrary. "The President is responsible for serving the entire nation," Pollack writes. "Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the U.S. government—and withholding or downplaying some of that information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility."
Kenneth Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He was an Iran-Iraq military analyst for the CIA, and the director of Persian Gulf Affairs and Near East and South Asian Affairs for the National Security Council.
We spoke by telephone on December 30.
—Elizabeth Shelburne
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In your piece, "Spies, Lies and Weapons," you argue that we fundamentally misjudged Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program—that, in fact, he had scaled his programs back to the point of almost nonexistence. Can you talk a little bit about why you think this?
For this article, I went back over the evidence that we had throughout the 1980s and 1990s and compared it with the information that is starting to trickle out of Iraq—such as what has been learned in the debriefings of Iraq scientists, what David Kay, of the Iraqi Survey Group, and his team have found, and other pieces of information that have surfaced. Prior to 1996, it looks like Saddam was trying to hold on to the maximum amount of his programs that he could. He was certainly trying to maintain a major research-and-development capability, and also a production capability that would allow him to reconstitute his WMD arsenal at any time, should he have chosen to do so. In this 1995-1996 time frame, it seems that Saddam realized that this effort was becoming counterproductive. More and more of it was being discovered by the United Nations. Hussein Kamel, his son-in-law and the head of the WMD programs, defected to the West, which caused the Iraqis to turn over huge amounts of documents. As a result of that whole fiasco, the UNSCOM inspectors learned a tremendous amount about the Iraqi efforts to conceal the WMD programs. There were a number of other important discoveries during that time. All of this made it almost impossible to get the sanctions lifted, which was, of course, Saddam's primary goal. So, it seems to have been the case that probably in 1996, Saddam made an important decision. He shifted from trying to maintain the maximum possible WMD programs to simply trying to maintain the minimum necessary to, at some point in the future, reconstitute them after the sanctions were lifted.
You mention that this widespread and seemingly incorrect perception began in the late 1990s, predating the current Bush Administration. You also mention that you were surprised during your second stint at the NSC at the dramatic change in the intelligence analysis of Saddam's WMD capabilities. How did the consensus move from being unsure of the presence of WMD in Iraq to being convinced of it?
I and others in the Clinton Administration saw an important change in the U.S. perspective on Iraq's WMD. In the mid-1990s, the intelligence community was convinced that the Iraqis were maintaining WMD capabilities, research and development, productions, and probably some weapons. But there wasn't a tremendous amount of fear because there was a widespread belief that the nuclear program was probably dormant. In the late 1990s, however, there was a tremendous amount of anxiety in the intelligence community, because there was a belief that the nuclear program had been reconstituted and that the Iraqis were making much greater progress in acquiring a nuclear weapon than they had before. As best I can tell, this change in belief was because of a combination of factors.
Probably the most important of these was the loss of the UN inspectors. At the time, obviously, we knew that losing the UN inspectors would be losing an important piece of the intelligence puzzle; but I don't think anyone realized just how big a piece that was. The UN inspectors had a tremendous capacity to watch what the Iraqis were doing. They were on the ground in Iraq; they had access to sights that neither U.S. intelligence nor any other intelligence service had; they were constantly speaking to Iraqis; they had a very large team that did nothing but try to check every jot and tittle of every document that the Iraqis presented. They had a tremendous collection capability and a tremendous analytic capability against Iraq. When the inspectors were pulled out, all that was lost.
There were also other important elements of what the UNSCOM inspectors did that were extremely important. For example, when a Western intelligence agency received a report—usually from a human source, but sometimes from a technical one—that suggested that there was WMD activity at a particular location, you could give that to the UNSCOM inspectors and they would go and check it out. They would come back and say, "Here's what we found. We found this, but we didn't find that." Or, "Yeah, something suspicious is maybe going on." Or sometimes, "it looked completely clean to us." If nothing else, this was a very good way of establishing on-the-ground truth about the different facilities. It was also an important source of reassurance, especially on the nuclear front. Since it's hard to keep a nuclear program secret, you could send the UNSCOM inspectors to certain places. They could bring their technical instruments and determine if there was radioactive material at the facility. UNSCOM activities were a very important check on things.
When the inspectors left Iraq, however, and that capability was lost, all of a sudden you lost 90 percent of your ability to collect intelligence on Iraq's WMD programs. You had no independent or, for lack of a better term, objective way of vetting reports. In addition, because you weren't getting information from the inspectors to begin with, the Western intelligence agencies became desperate for information. They started to look much harder at defector reporting.
In the late 1990s, you had more defectors coming out of Iraq who were telling the intelligence communities all kinds of very disconcerting things about progress that the Iraqis were making. In retrospect, many of the reports seem very questionable. Many of them indicated that the Iraqis were reconstituting their nuclear program, were making much greater progress on biological weapons, were doing very aggressive research and development, and had restarted production facilities. All of these are things that the U.S. has yet to actually find concrete evidence of in Iraq. But, because you didn't have UNSCOM around, this was really the only information out there. The loss of the inspectors meant that the intelligence community came to rely more and more heavily on the defectors' reports and had less and less ability to actually check on their truthfulness.
So then, this belief that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program came from defector reports?
By and large, yes.
It's surprising to me that there wasn't a move to put some sort of more rigorous questioning or internal vetting into place. Was there no movement toward that in the CIA or other intelligence organizations?
The intelligence agencies did vet these defectors as well as they possibly could. They actually disregarded the reports of many of the defectors who came out of Iraq. There were all kinds of people coming out of Iraq, with all kinds of wild stories about what Saddam was up to. Some of those reports were discounted entirely because the intelligence community didn't trust the people. My guess is that only a quarter to a third of the defector reporting was ever believed. It's just that at the moment, given what we've found in Iraq, it looks like even that number was too high.
Part of the problem is trying to establish the reliability of a source. If somebody claims to be a nuclear physicist, what do they know about nuclear physics? You also want to ask about whether the information they're providing matches up with other sources. In an ideal world, you'd like to be able to compare the reporting of a defector against things that you absolutely know to be true. The inspectors gave that kind of credibility.
Were there people in the intelligence agencies who said, we just don't have enough information to have an opinion or to be able to ascertain what the true story is?
Certainly some people were more cautious than others. A very good example of that is the State Department's intelligence shop, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which is referred to as INR. INR dissented on the reconstitution of Iraq's nuclear program. They felt the evidence was not persuasive enough.
A couple of things are worth keeping in mind here. The first is that, in 1991, the entire U.S. intelligence community had been fooled by Iraq—in the other way. The Iraqis had a massive nuclear-weapons program and were much closer to a weapon than anyone had suspected. At that time, INR was the worst about saying that the Iraqis had absolutely nothing. In fact, INR refused to concede that the Iraqis even had a nuclear-weapons program at all. So this time around, the idea that INR was again the one saying that the Iraqis weren't threatening—didn't have a program—and that everything was dormant, just seemed like more of the same. In some cases, it was literally the same analysts at INR who had made the judgment in 1991 that proved to be so horribly wrong. Because of this, a lot of people in the intelligence community simply discounted them. Their feeling was that INR never thinks the Iraqis have nuclear weapons. They were wrong last time and they are wrong this time.
The context of all this is actually an important second element of this story. It is important to remember the mindset of most analysts on Iraq. The Iraqis had a track record; they had consistently demonstrated that they were absolutely determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction. If my analysis is correct and they shifted over to dismantling their WMD programs in 1996, that would be the first time that they really broke from the past pattern.
The fact that we didn't have very good information this time was not an obvious signal that he was doing something different and had chosen to disband many of the programs. It seemed simply to be a sign that he had gotten even better at hiding them from us. Of course, it is important to remember that what we have found in Iraq does indicate that the Iraqis were retaining programs. It is not the case the Iraqis dismantled everything—it's just that they dismantled most. What they kept was only a residual element that would enable them to reconstitute at some point in the future. The weapons were clearly much less threatening than the U.S. intelligence believed them to be, but it's not as if they didn't have any WMD programs at all.
You too were a believer in the idea that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. How did that happen and on what evidence did you come to that conclusion?
My evidence came straight from the intelligence community. As an analyst at the CIA and as a member of the NSC when Hussein Kamel defected, everything I saw indicated that the Iraqis still had these programs. When I went back to the NSC in the late 1990s, I was simply relying on the intelligence community to tell me what the right answer was. I did not simply accept their judgment uncritically, however. I did press them, and I asked them why they thought what they thought. They seemed to have reasonable answers and sources out there. I pressed them on why they believed their sources, and they responded with what seemed like a reasonable set of suppositions. I was certainly not alone in this—this was a consensus among the U.S. government, it was a consensus among the UN inspectors, it was a consensus of American experts outside the U.S. government. In fact, it was a consensus in the entire international community.
It's important to remember that any intelligence service or country with the ability to monitor Iraq and its weapons programs—Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Israel—was a hundred percent certain that Saddam had these programs. There may have been some debate over just how aggressive they were or how far along they were. The Germans were the most alarmist of all on the subject of a nuclear weapon. They thought the Iraqis might have one in as little as two or three years. Our own intelligence community tended to be a little more conservative; they thought it was more like four to six years away—or five to seven. But no one doubted that Saddam had these weapons.
Your book, The Threatening Storm, argued that we would eventually have to go to war in order to remove Saddam and keep him from acquiring nuclear weapons. The book was said to have been very useful to the Bush Administration in the run-up to war. Can you tell me how and why it was helpful? Was the book's argument ever misrepresented?
I think there were a lot of people who did nothing but read the subtitle to the book, which was The Case for Invading Iraq. I made it very clear that while I did have one belief in common with Bush Administration, which was that it would eventually be necessary to go to war to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, I had very different ideas about why the war was necessary, how it should be fought, and what the United States needed to do to deal with all the unintended consequences that might result. For example, I never believed that it was necessary for the United States to go to war as early as 2003. I did not believe the threat was imminent.
I also thought that it was critical for the United States to do a whole bunch of important things first. We needed to deal with the war on terrorism, get the Middle East peace process back on track, and develop a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of Iraq. All of these were major sections in my book. The case I made for war was very different from the case the Bush Administration made for war. There was a lot in my book that would be critical of the Bush Administration's actual run-up to war and that argued against the arguments that the Bush Administration were making.
So then, in some ways, your argument was misrepresented?
I certainly can't point to any Bush Administration official who held up my book and misrepresented it. But it certainly was the case that a lot of people misunderstood what my case for war was. In fact, my case for war was as much a critique of the Bush Administration and an argument against what the Bush Administration was doing as it was an argument for it. One of my most important points was that going to war was a potentially very messy undertaking that had all kinds of big problems associated with it. I argued that it was critical, therefore, that the United States do everything it could to prevent those unforeseen, potential problems from arising before we went to war. If we didn't, we would just end up substituting one set of problems for another.
And would you say that's come to pass?
Certainly we have created a whole lot of problems that we didn't need to. Two of them come to mind. One, I think that clearly we should have and could have done a much better job planning for post-war reconstruction. Of course, the wonderful companion piece by James Fallows points out that there was a tremendous amount of good planning that was going on within the U.S. government, but that it was the hubris of certain other individuals within the government that caused us to simply disregard all those plans. My own perspective and the one you get from reading Jim's piece is that the vast majority of problems that we are currently experiencing in post-war Iraq were entirely avoidable. This did not need to be as messy, as dangerous, as deadly, and as expensive as it has proved to be.
Another problem is that many of the troubles we are experiencing in the Middle East are the result of the Administration's absolute unwillingness to engage in the Middle East peace process before going to war with Iraq. Their argument was always that the road to Jerusalem ran through Baghdad. My argument was the exact opposite—the road to Baghdad needed to run through Jerusalem. That wasn't to say that you needed a peace agreement before you could go to war with Saddam Hussein. I thought that was unlikely and unnecessary. But we did need to get the negotiations back on track. I think we could have avoided a lot of the violence, tension, and animosities in the Middle East today if we'd pursued that route rather than the one we did.
You mention that you saw an earlier generation of analysts mistakenly assess the progress Saddam had made on a nuclear weapon before 1991. Looking back, did you see any of the same mistakes being made by analysts from the late nineties until the war albeit in the other direction?
In both cases, the analysts had a certain set of preconceptions. This is always the case and is inevitable in analysis work. Having been an analyst myself, I don't say it as a judgment against analysts—that somehow they were not doing their job. Analysts always have to examine their assumptions, but you wouldn't be a human being if you didn't have a set of them. To be honest, you wouldn't be a very good analyst if you didn't have them. You have to have a theory about what is going on when you go in. You have to be willing to challenge the theory and be willing to change it when there is disconfirming evidence, but you have to have some kind of overarching theory.
Before 1991, the theory of the technical analysts was that the Iraqis were not very good at things, they were terribly inefficient, their scientists weren't very skilled or knowledgeable—it was a Third World country that really didn't have the capability to build a nuclear weapon. In particular, one of the problems was that many of these analysts were mirror imaging, which is a tremendous problem in Western analysis of the Middle East. It's analysts saying, If we were them, this is the way we would do it. The problem is, of course, that we aren't them and they don't do things the way we would.
In 1991, we found that they had taken a number of different routes, many of which were much cruder than the ones we would have used. In some cases, they were using technology that was considered obsolete, but that nevertheless was perfectly useful. One of the most important methods that they were using to enrich uranium was one of the methods that the United States had used during World War II. That has been superseded many times over, so the assumption was that nobody would do it that way now. But if you were a country that didn't have the technology, resources, and skill, maybe you would do it that way. Nobody was thinking about it in those terms.
This time around, in the late 1990s, the assumptions were much better founded. The assumptions were that Saddam Hussein is absolutely determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons. That set of assumptions clearly colored judgments on everything else. If someone came out and said, "Saddam Hussein has a nuclear bomb," he was more likely to be believed than the person who came out and said, "Saddam has nothing, he doesn't even want a nuclear weapon anymore."
So there would have been very few, if any, people, who ever posited, even as a hypothetical, that Iraq didn't have any imminent WMD programs?
I can't think of anyone who did not believe that the Iraqis had a weapons of mass destruction program. There was simply no one.
Around 1994-1995, UNSCOM inspectors, who had been in the country since 1991, began to think they were done in Iraq—that they had found all the weapons there were to find and that Iraq no longer had any WMD capabilities. You mention that many intelligences agencies disagreed with them. Why did UNSCOM think their job was done? Why did the intelligence services disagree?
UNSCOM inspectors had gone into Iraq and spent two or three years searching around. They thought they'd pretty much gotten everything that was out there. In retrospect, even from the vantage point of 1996, it was clear that the Iraqis had figured out how to fool the UNSCOM inspectors. They had changed the way that they were operating and they were keeping UNSCOM from seeing things. The intelligence services, on the other hand, were getting information that indicated that the inspectors were getting fooled. The analysts had seen the Iraqis do this before and they simply believed that the Iraqis were doing it again.
In this case, they were right. The preconceived notions of the analysts were absolutely correct. It was UNSCOM that was wrong. The Iraqis did still have the programs. All of that came out in the 1995-1996 time frame, when Hussein Kamel defected and there were a series of other revelations where UNSCOM and foreign-intelligence services caught the Iraqis red-handed with SCUD production facilities, a complete biological production facility, all kinds of illegal trades and transactions, and purchases abroad. After this, the inspectors realized how completely wrong they had been—like the saying "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." They really thought they had disarmed the Iraqis. They wanted to transition the files and were actually saying nasty things about the U.S. having an obsession with the Iraqis. After 1995-1996, the inspectors turned 180 degrees. From then on, they too were absolutely convinced that Saddam would stop at nothing to acquire the weapons. They were convinced they had an enormous problem—a problem that would probably never go away as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.
How were they so duped? If they were the only people on the ground, the only ones charged with finding the weapons, how did they get the situation so wrong?
The Iraqis are very good at this sort of thing. They're very good at counterintelligence—they infiltrated the UNSCOM operation, they had agents and friends in all kind of foreign governments who provided them with information and tip-offs regarding UNSCOM. As a result, the UNSCOM people themselves believe that out of 250 no-notice inspections, only six of them ever actually surprised the Iraqis, which is incredible.
Beyond that, they also just took a whole lot of preventative measures. They did bury some stuff, they did break programs up, they did assign personnel to seemingly innocuous programs, such as hoof and mouth vaccines. But they kept whole teams together and they all knew that at some point Saddam would tell them to start working on something like anthrax.
In other cases, they set up completely legitimate facilities, which they knew could some day be transitioned over to making weapons of mass destruction. But for the moment, they were making baby milk or something along those lines.
What did UNSCOM do after 1995-96 to prevent the same thing from happening again?
After 1995-96, UNSCOM was simply much more aggressive in how it went about things. Also, they started with a different set of assumptions. (We're back to these assumptions and why they are important.) They were no longer skeptical of what the U.S. and other intelligence agencies said about Iraq and were no longer agnostic about whether or not the Iraqis had weapons. They became very supportive of Western intelligence agencies and the materials they were finding. They were certain that the Iraqis were hiding things, which caused them to change both their method of operation and their approach to looking for weapons in Iraq.
One of the most important things they did was to go after the concealment mechanism. UNSCOM realized that they might not be able to get at the programs themselves, but they could start by going after the methods and organizations that the Iraqis were using to hide them. They thought if they could get that, then maybe they could get at the weapons themselves. UNSCOM went after them to try to break open Iraq's hidden doors.
You mention that the CIA and other intelligence operations only had meager assets in Iraq. What exactly does "meager assets" mean?
Iraq was an extremely difficult environment for any foreign intelligence agency to operate in. Iraq was a closed, totalitarian society. Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi expatriate, had the wonderful phrase, the Republic of Fear. Saddam had created a Stalinist, self-policing society, where the people were so terrified that every word they uttered was being heard by some Iraqi authority that they just wouldn't say anything.
Foreigners in Iraq were tailed and harassed. In the United States or other parts of the world, they want to keep tabs on those they believe are foreign intelligences operators. But, they do it surreptitiously. In Iraq, it was very clear—you had someone walking fifty feet behind you at all times. If you did anything the Iraqis didn't like, they started harassing you. They'd throw you out of the country, they'd beat you up, they'd break into your home. They would make it very clear that if you kept doing things they didn't want, you could pay a very heavy price for it. They tapped all of the outgoing phone lines and tried to keep tabs on all the communication going into and out of Iraq.
They had an enormous network of informers throughout the country. Most Iraqis believe that in a country of 24 million people, 2 to 4 million of those people were on the payroll of various government organizations. Whether it was true or not doesn't matter. All that mattered was that the Iraqis believed it. They assumed that one out of every four or five people they knew was reporting for the government. In this kind of environment, it is almost impossible for case officers to operate, to recruit Iraqis, to gather information on this society and especially to meet with sensitive personnel. The idea that an Iraqi government official or a scientist would meet with someone connected to the Americans was unheard of. That made it extraordinarily difficult for the United States or any other country to maintain a network of spies inside of Iraq. As a result, there was very little human intelligence that was forthcoming out of Iraq.
So it wasn't that we had made a choice not to devote more assets to Iraq; it's that it was a nearly impossible place for us to devote more assets.
Correct. The CIA and other intelligence agencies devoted tremendous assets to Iraq. It was an extremely high priority, with a real emphasis on trying to collect against Iraq. But it was an extraordinarily difficult target. I think no matter what level of effort we put against it, it was going to be extremely hard.
That said, there are always more resources that can be devoted to a problem. Think about two examples, the first being the Soviet Union. Like Iraq, the Soviet Union was an extremely hard target. Yet the United States turned itself inside out to try to find out what was going on there. We had far more failures than successes, but I think arguably we had better collection against the Soviet Union than we did against Saddam's Iraq.
The second example is terrorism. Before September 11, the United States had a tremendous intelligence effort against terrorism. It was one of our highest priorities, with all kinds of people working on it and huge resources being lavished on it. After September 11, the resources that were lavished on terrorism were expanded exponentially. There are always greater levels you can go to if something is that high a priority. In retrospect, we may have wanted to put even great resources against Iraq. It's hard to fault the U.S. intelligence community for devoting the percentage of its assets that it did, but we might have asked the question, Are we devoting enough to intelligence in general?
You also criticize the Administration for their interpretation of the available intelligence. Would you say they failed the American people?
There are certain members of the Administration who did a disservice to the American people. I don't want to fault the entire Administration, because I think there were a lot of people in the Administration who were saying things that were completely true and what they were doing was completely above-board. But there were others in the Administration who really weren't.
The thing that upset and disappointed me the most was that there were some Administration officials, and particularly some high Administration officials, who were making statements that weren't the whole truth. The one thing for which I can find no excuse is this question of not telling the American people the whole truth. The nuclear issue is the most important example of this. The judgment of the intelligence community, expressed in a number of written documents, some of which have been made public, was that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear-weapons programs and that he could possibly acquire a nuclear weapon in one to two years if he managed to get fissile material on the black market. The intelligence community felt that it was much more likely that he would not be able to acquire a nuclear weapon for five to seven years. In making the case for war, a number of high-level officials in the Administration stressed the one-to-two year figure, which made the threat from Iraq seem imminent. The intelligence community couldn't rule it out, but the best judgment was that it was a more distant threat.
I think the Administration was only telling part of the truth to the American people because it was trying to justify a war in 2003. The intelligence estimates just didn't really support that imminence. The Administration could have said, "Look, the intelligence community thinks it may be five to seven years away, but they do think it's also possible that they could get it in one to two years. After 9/11, we shouldn't take even that kind of a risk." I think that would have been a much more honest way of presenting it to the American people.
But it might not have resulted in going to war.
That is my sense. My sense is that the Administration recognized that that kind of argument would not generate the same enthusiasm for a war in 2003 as the argument the way they cast it did. As far as I'm concerned, these are not political arguments. This is an argument about U.S. national security and about going to war. That's supposed to transcend politics. Of course, I've lived in Washington long enough to know that it's rare that national security actually does end up transcending politics—but that doesn't make it right.
Inviting All Democrats
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — I'd like to invite Richard Gephardt and the other Democratic candidates to come here to Cambodia and discuss trade policy with scavengers like Nhep Chanda, who spends her days rooting through filth in the city dump.
One of the most unfortunate trends in the Democratic presidential race has been the way nearly all of the candidates, including Howard Dean, the front-runner, have been flirting with anti-trade positions by putting the emphasis on labor, environmental and human rights standards in international agreements.
While Mr. Gephardt calls for an international minimum wage, Mr. Dean was quoted in USA Today in October as saying, "I believe that trade also requires human rights and labor standards and environmental standards that are concurrent around the world."
Perhaps the candidates are simply pandering to unions, or bashing President Bush. But my guess is that they sincerely believe that such trade policies would help poor people abroad — and that's why they should all traipse through a Cambodian garbage dump to see how economically naïve these schemes would be.
Nhep Chanda is a 17-year-old girl who is one of hundreds of Cambodians who toil all day, every day, picking through the dump for plastic bags, metal cans and bits of food. The stench clogs the nostrils, and parts of the dump are burning, producing acrid smoke that blinds the eyes.
The scavengers are chased by swarms of flies and biting insects, their hands are caked with filth, and those who are barefoot cut their feet on glass. Some are small children.
Nhep Chanda averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a garment factory — working only six days a week, inside instead of in the broiling sun, for up to $2 a day — is a dream.
"I'd like to work in a factory, but I don't have any ID card, and you need one to show that you're old enough," she said wistfully. (Since the candidates are unlikely to find the time to travel to the third world anytime soon, I put an audio slide show of the Cambodian realities on the Web for them at www.nytimes.com/kristof.)
All the complaints about third world sweatshops are true and then some: factories sometimes dump effluent into rivers or otherwise ravage the environment. But they have raised the standard of living in Singapore, South Korea and southern China, and they offer a leg up for people in countries like Cambodia.
"I want to work in a factory, but I'm in poor health and always feel dizzy," said Lay Eng, a 23-year-old woman. And no wonder: she has been picking through the filth, seven days a week, for six years. She has never been to a doctor.
Here in Cambodia factory jobs are in such demand that workers usually have to bribe a factory insider with a month's salary just to get hired.
Along the Bassac River, construction workers told me they wanted factory jobs because the work would be so much safer than clambering up scaffolding without safety harnesses. Some also said sweatshop jobs would be preferable because they would mean a lot less sweat. (Westerners call them "sweatshops," but they offer one of the few third world jobs that doesn't involve constant sweat.)
In Asia, moreover, the factories tend to hire mostly girls and young women with few other job opportunities. The result has been to begin to give girls and women some status and power, some hint of social equality, some alternative to the sex industry.
Cambodia has a fair trade system and promotes itself as an enlightened garment producer. That's great. But if the U.S. tries to ban products from countries that don't meet international standards, jobs will be shifted from the most wretched areas to better-off nations like Malaysia or Mexico. Already there are very few factories in Africa or the poor countries of Asia, and if we raise the bar higher, there will be even fewer.
The Democratic Party has been pro-trade since Franklin Roosevelt, and President Bill Clinton in particular tugged the party to embrace the realities of trade. Now the party may be retreating toward protectionism under the guise of labor standards.
That would hurt American consumers. But it would be particularly devastating for laborers in the poorest parts of the world. For the fundamental problem in the poor countries of Africa and Asia is not that sweatshops exploit too many workers; it's that they don't exploit enough.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — I'd like to invite Richard Gephardt and the other Democratic candidates to come here to Cambodia and discuss trade policy with scavengers like Nhep Chanda, who spends her days rooting through filth in the city dump.
One of the most unfortunate trends in the Democratic presidential race has been the way nearly all of the candidates, including Howard Dean, the front-runner, have been flirting with anti-trade positions by putting the emphasis on labor, environmental and human rights standards in international agreements.
While Mr. Gephardt calls for an international minimum wage, Mr. Dean was quoted in USA Today in October as saying, "I believe that trade also requires human rights and labor standards and environmental standards that are concurrent around the world."
Perhaps the candidates are simply pandering to unions, or bashing President Bush. But my guess is that they sincerely believe that such trade policies would help poor people abroad — and that's why they should all traipse through a Cambodian garbage dump to see how economically naïve these schemes would be.
Nhep Chanda is a 17-year-old girl who is one of hundreds of Cambodians who toil all day, every day, picking through the dump for plastic bags, metal cans and bits of food. The stench clogs the nostrils, and parts of the dump are burning, producing acrid smoke that blinds the eyes.
The scavengers are chased by swarms of flies and biting insects, their hands are caked with filth, and those who are barefoot cut their feet on glass. Some are small children.
Nhep Chanda averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a garment factory — working only six days a week, inside instead of in the broiling sun, for up to $2 a day — is a dream.
"I'd like to work in a factory, but I don't have any ID card, and you need one to show that you're old enough," she said wistfully. (Since the candidates are unlikely to find the time to travel to the third world anytime soon, I put an audio slide show of the Cambodian realities on the Web for them at www.nytimes.com/kristof.)
All the complaints about third world sweatshops are true and then some: factories sometimes dump effluent into rivers or otherwise ravage the environment. But they have raised the standard of living in Singapore, South Korea and southern China, and they offer a leg up for people in countries like Cambodia.
"I want to work in a factory, but I'm in poor health and always feel dizzy," said Lay Eng, a 23-year-old woman. And no wonder: she has been picking through the filth, seven days a week, for six years. She has never been to a doctor.
Here in Cambodia factory jobs are in such demand that workers usually have to bribe a factory insider with a month's salary just to get hired.
Along the Bassac River, construction workers told me they wanted factory jobs because the work would be so much safer than clambering up scaffolding without safety harnesses. Some also said sweatshop jobs would be preferable because they would mean a lot less sweat. (Westerners call them "sweatshops," but they offer one of the few third world jobs that doesn't involve constant sweat.)
In Asia, moreover, the factories tend to hire mostly girls and young women with few other job opportunities. The result has been to begin to give girls and women some status and power, some hint of social equality, some alternative to the sex industry.
Cambodia has a fair trade system and promotes itself as an enlightened garment producer. That's great. But if the U.S. tries to ban products from countries that don't meet international standards, jobs will be shifted from the most wretched areas to better-off nations like Malaysia or Mexico. Already there are very few factories in Africa or the poor countries of Asia, and if we raise the bar higher, there will be even fewer.
The Democratic Party has been pro-trade since Franklin Roosevelt, and President Bill Clinton in particular tugged the party to embrace the realities of trade. Now the party may be retreating toward protectionism under the guise of labor standards.
That would hurt American consumers. But it would be particularly devastating for laborers in the poorest parts of the world. For the fundamental problem in the poor countries of Africa and Asia is not that sweatshops exploit too many workers; it's that they don't exploit enough.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
In Sunni Triangle, Loss of Privilege Breeds Bitterness
Veterans of Security Apparatus Are Now Pariahs
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 13, 2004; Page A01
THULUIYA, Iraq -- Less than a year ago, Ismael Mohammed Juwara lived high in the food chain of President Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He was a secret policeman feared and respected among his comrades and in his hometown, enjoying a cornucopia of privileges from the government.
Now, as he scrapes out a living by selling diesel fuel illegally, he is a pariah in the new Iraq. "We were on top of the system. We had dreams," said Juwara, a former member of the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service that reported directly to the now-deposed president. "Now we are the losers. We lost our positions, our status, the security of our families, stability. Curse the Americans. Curse them."
His is the kind of angry lament that can be heard all over central Iraq, the region most devoted to Hussein. It is the area of tribes and clans that were closest to him and that could expect power and privileges from his government. As Arabs following the Sunni strain of Islam, the people here enjoyed an added advantage, because Hussein had extended their long dominance here, although they represent only about 20 percent of the population.
Hundreds of thousands of men from this area, now known as the Sunni Triangle, joined Hussein's extensive security apparatus, including the army and multiple police and intelligence agencies. As such, they are mostly outcasts from the new governing system under construction by U.S.-led occupation authorities and their selected Iraqi political allies.
Juwara has two strikes against him: He was part of a feared repressive agency and a high-ranking Baath Party member. Such Baathists are prohibited from government posts, as well as new security organizations now being formed.
Juwara, 46, was sitting in the police station in this town along the Tigris River one recent morning as new officers sat idle. Relations between the police and U.S. occupation forces are strained. U.S. officials stopped using them for guard duty because they were considered unreliable, and soldiers no longer patrol with them. "They think we should know everything that goes on here, but we don't," said Hafath Salah Hussein, the liaison officer with the Americans.
In clannish Thuluiya, working for the Baath Party government was often a family affair. Hafath Hussein is a cousin of Juwara. With them was Hussein Saleh Hussein, Hafath's brother, who said he once belonged to the Interior Ministry's general security section, another secret police branch.
Hafath Hussein and Juwara escorted a reporter to an improvised diesel fuel station in a muddy field nearby. The men earn what they can by purchasing fuel and reselling it to truckers and farmers who don't want to wait in long lines at gas station.
Along the way, Juwara talked about his life. He said he joined the Baath Party in high school, enlisted in the army and then the secret police. His job was to watch over army personnel and opponents of the government in such conflicted locales as Basra, the large, predominantly Shiite Muslim city in the south, and Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish north.
When he married, the government supplied him and his wife with a bedroom set. Soon after, he received a free plot of land and a home-construction loan, which was converted into a grant when the second of his nine children was born. He bought cement at cost from a government warehouse.
Health care, Juwara said, was supplied through Rashid military hospital, a special facility in Baghdad reserved for security and military officers. Last winter, on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion, Juwara said, he received permission to travel abroad to get treatment for his son, 13, who suffers from a nerve condition that slurs his speech.
When Juwara bought a refrigerator, he went to a market set aside for secret police families and got it at a discount. He drove a Peugeot supplied by his unit. During the past decade of economic sanctions, he received extra rations. Now, he said, "we cook beans left over from before the war."
He said that before the war, he sold his house to finance construction of a larger one, then moved into a small rental home. After the war, he used up the construction money to support his wife and children. His new house is only half built. He is barely making ends meet, he said, explaining, "There are no jobs, certainly not with the Americans."
People such as Juwara form the core of resistance to the occupation and the developing order, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. Frequently referred to as Baathist remnants or dead-enders, they are resentful and unwilling to accept their lot quietly. For that, they make no apologies.
"Was being a Baathist some sort of disease?" Juwara said, raising his voice suddenly. "Was serving the country some sort of crime?" In effect, Sunnis such as Juwara are experiencing the changes since the U.S. invasion as a revolution in which the long-suppressed Shiite majority is taking charge.
"These people with turbans are going to run the country. What do they know? Iraq needs people like us," Juwara bellowed. People had been crowding around to buy diesel fuel, but sales momentarily halted.
Sunnis who served the deposed government often demonstrate their frustrations. In the Shiite south, they have rioted for jobs. In the Sunni center, they have rioted for pay. Conversations with Juwara and some of his colleagues from the secret police indicate that they are not loyal so much to Hussein as to a subsidized, predictable way of life.
Many people in Thuluiya, with a population of 150,000, benefited from life during the Hussein government. Big villas line the river and the land where houses sit was supplied free by the government.
"Just about every family had someone working in security or the army or some government job," said Maj. Hussein Mahdi Obeidy, a member of the U.S.-appointed police force. "It was normal to join the Baath Party. It was like a rule." Although Obeidy is a former Baathist, he was sufficiently low-ranking to qualify for the new force.
Thuluiya escaped the war; U.S. troops rushed by to other destinations. They returned in June, having discovered that guerrillas had been hiding in the area. In the months since, U.S. forces have detained hundreds of suspects in and around Thuluiya. Yet townspeople say that rebels come and go freely, hiding in homes or among lush date groves.
Besides his economic woes, Juwara expressed deep feelings of humiliation. He told of a trip to the Central Bank in Baghdad on a quest for records of his account in Thuluiya. He said the bank records were looted after the war.
"You know what they told me? 'You are from Thuluiya. You are a dog. Go and ask Saddam for the money,' " he recalled. "A few months ago, they would never have treated me like that. They wouldn't dare."
He pointed out the house of a former colleague. It was empty. "Abu Falah has disappeared. The Americans are after him," Juwara said. "They think he is with the resistance. Maybe. He needs the money."
At the field of diesel barrels, Juwara helped Hussein Saleh Hussein as customers complained that the price was too high. Hussein has his own troubles. He also sold his house. He was living with his brother, but the atmosphere grew tense because Hussein could not pay rent, so he moved to a cheap place. He sold the Mitsubishi that the Interior Ministry had supplied him. He has two wives and 10 children. "People say that the resistance pays to kill Americans. Pretty soon, that will seem like a good idea," he said.
It is illegal to resell fuel in Iraq, a fact Hafath Hussein suddenly remembered. As a policeman, he is supposed to stop it. "I tell them not to do it.
"But," he said as he pulled the reporter to one side, "we all know each other here. We will have to live together when the Americans leave. What can I do?"
Veterans of Security Apparatus Are Now Pariahs
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 13, 2004; Page A01
THULUIYA, Iraq -- Less than a year ago, Ismael Mohammed Juwara lived high in the food chain of President Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He was a secret policeman feared and respected among his comrades and in his hometown, enjoying a cornucopia of privileges from the government.
Now, as he scrapes out a living by selling diesel fuel illegally, he is a pariah in the new Iraq. "We were on top of the system. We had dreams," said Juwara, a former member of the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service that reported directly to the now-deposed president. "Now we are the losers. We lost our positions, our status, the security of our families, stability. Curse the Americans. Curse them."
His is the kind of angry lament that can be heard all over central Iraq, the region most devoted to Hussein. It is the area of tribes and clans that were closest to him and that could expect power and privileges from his government. As Arabs following the Sunni strain of Islam, the people here enjoyed an added advantage, because Hussein had extended their long dominance here, although they represent only about 20 percent of the population.
Hundreds of thousands of men from this area, now known as the Sunni Triangle, joined Hussein's extensive security apparatus, including the army and multiple police and intelligence agencies. As such, they are mostly outcasts from the new governing system under construction by U.S.-led occupation authorities and their selected Iraqi political allies.
Juwara has two strikes against him: He was part of a feared repressive agency and a high-ranking Baath Party member. Such Baathists are prohibited from government posts, as well as new security organizations now being formed.
Juwara, 46, was sitting in the police station in this town along the Tigris River one recent morning as new officers sat idle. Relations between the police and U.S. occupation forces are strained. U.S. officials stopped using them for guard duty because they were considered unreliable, and soldiers no longer patrol with them. "They think we should know everything that goes on here, but we don't," said Hafath Salah Hussein, the liaison officer with the Americans.
In clannish Thuluiya, working for the Baath Party government was often a family affair. Hafath Hussein is a cousin of Juwara. With them was Hussein Saleh Hussein, Hafath's brother, who said he once belonged to the Interior Ministry's general security section, another secret police branch.
Hafath Hussein and Juwara escorted a reporter to an improvised diesel fuel station in a muddy field nearby. The men earn what they can by purchasing fuel and reselling it to truckers and farmers who don't want to wait in long lines at gas station.
Along the way, Juwara talked about his life. He said he joined the Baath Party in high school, enlisted in the army and then the secret police. His job was to watch over army personnel and opponents of the government in such conflicted locales as Basra, the large, predominantly Shiite Muslim city in the south, and Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish north.
When he married, the government supplied him and his wife with a bedroom set. Soon after, he received a free plot of land and a home-construction loan, which was converted into a grant when the second of his nine children was born. He bought cement at cost from a government warehouse.
Health care, Juwara said, was supplied through Rashid military hospital, a special facility in Baghdad reserved for security and military officers. Last winter, on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion, Juwara said, he received permission to travel abroad to get treatment for his son, 13, who suffers from a nerve condition that slurs his speech.
When Juwara bought a refrigerator, he went to a market set aside for secret police families and got it at a discount. He drove a Peugeot supplied by his unit. During the past decade of economic sanctions, he received extra rations. Now, he said, "we cook beans left over from before the war."
He said that before the war, he sold his house to finance construction of a larger one, then moved into a small rental home. After the war, he used up the construction money to support his wife and children. His new house is only half built. He is barely making ends meet, he said, explaining, "There are no jobs, certainly not with the Americans."
People such as Juwara form the core of resistance to the occupation and the developing order, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. Frequently referred to as Baathist remnants or dead-enders, they are resentful and unwilling to accept their lot quietly. For that, they make no apologies.
"Was being a Baathist some sort of disease?" Juwara said, raising his voice suddenly. "Was serving the country some sort of crime?" In effect, Sunnis such as Juwara are experiencing the changes since the U.S. invasion as a revolution in which the long-suppressed Shiite majority is taking charge.
"These people with turbans are going to run the country. What do they know? Iraq needs people like us," Juwara bellowed. People had been crowding around to buy diesel fuel, but sales momentarily halted.
Sunnis who served the deposed government often demonstrate their frustrations. In the Shiite south, they have rioted for jobs. In the Sunni center, they have rioted for pay. Conversations with Juwara and some of his colleagues from the secret police indicate that they are not loyal so much to Hussein as to a subsidized, predictable way of life.
Many people in Thuluiya, with a population of 150,000, benefited from life during the Hussein government. Big villas line the river and the land where houses sit was supplied free by the government.
"Just about every family had someone working in security or the army or some government job," said Maj. Hussein Mahdi Obeidy, a member of the U.S.-appointed police force. "It was normal to join the Baath Party. It was like a rule." Although Obeidy is a former Baathist, he was sufficiently low-ranking to qualify for the new force.
Thuluiya escaped the war; U.S. troops rushed by to other destinations. They returned in June, having discovered that guerrillas had been hiding in the area. In the months since, U.S. forces have detained hundreds of suspects in and around Thuluiya. Yet townspeople say that rebels come and go freely, hiding in homes or among lush date groves.
Besides his economic woes, Juwara expressed deep feelings of humiliation. He told of a trip to the Central Bank in Baghdad on a quest for records of his account in Thuluiya. He said the bank records were looted after the war.
"You know what they told me? 'You are from Thuluiya. You are a dog. Go and ask Saddam for the money,' " he recalled. "A few months ago, they would never have treated me like that. They wouldn't dare."
He pointed out the house of a former colleague. It was empty. "Abu Falah has disappeared. The Americans are after him," Juwara said. "They think he is with the resistance. Maybe. He needs the money."
At the field of diesel barrels, Juwara helped Hussein Saleh Hussein as customers complained that the price was too high. Hussein has his own troubles. He also sold his house. He was living with his brother, but the atmosphere grew tense because Hussein could not pay rent, so he moved to a cheap place. He sold the Mitsubishi that the Interior Ministry had supplied him. He has two wives and 10 children. "People say that the resistance pays to kill Americans. Pretty soon, that will seem like a good idea," he said.
It is illegal to resell fuel in Iraq, a fact Hafath Hussein suddenly remembered. As a policeman, he is supposed to stop it. "I tell them not to do it.
"But," he said as he pulled the reporter to one side, "we all know each other here. We will have to live together when the Americans leave. What can I do?"
Shadows of Dictatorship
January 13, 2004
The clergy-led revolution that sent the shah of Iran fleeing into exile will mark its 25th anniversary next month. The hard-line mullahs who succeeded the shah and who jail pro-democracy activists, shut newspapers that they consider liberal and try to steal parliamentary elections should remember that the shah's reign lasted a bit less than 26 years.
Revolution may not be in the air, but there is no doubting that many Iranians despise the hard-line clerics as much as their parents did the shah.
The 1997 election of a moderate Islamic scholar, President Mohammad Khatami, raised hopes of political liberalization. His reelection in 2001 by a wide margin kept those hopes alive despite his inability to sway Iran's supreme arbiters, the religious authority known as the Guardian Council.
Just as important as Khatami's presence has been the election to Iran's parliament of reformers unhappy with the fundamentalists; the 290 members now include an estimated 200 reformers.
Unfortunately, the anti-reform forces still get the last word. Over the weekend, members of Iran's parliament announced that the Guardian Council had disqualified more than 25% — perhaps as many as half — of the more than 8,000 candidates in next month's elections, many would-be reformers among them.
This should be a make-or-break issue for Khatami. He has already watched the Guardian Council veto laws that parliament passed to reduce political prosecutions, expand press freedoms and investigate charges of torture by the brutal security forces.
The president should confront the council and the country's "supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and demand that they reverse the disqualifications or face Khatami's resignation.
The conservatives, stunned by their losses in the 2000 parliamentary elections, don't want to risk losing again. Their claims that those disqualified from running had violated fundamentalist rules of Islam or committed vague crimes are laughable.
Half of Iranians are under age 20, so they did not experience the euphoria that greeted the overthrow of the shah and his corrupt, brutal security forces.
Instead, the young see nearly half the population living in poverty despite great oil and natural gas reserves. They chafe under social and political restrictions imposed by Khamenei and the six clerics he appoints to the 12-member Guardian Council.
Any stiffening of repression may lead to violent protest, another match lighting tinder in a volatile region. Iranians suffered in one way under the secular shah and in another under the religious excesses of the ayatollahs. Offering elections but removing the right to freely run for office is a step backward into the shadows of dictatorship.
January 13, 2004
The clergy-led revolution that sent the shah of Iran fleeing into exile will mark its 25th anniversary next month. The hard-line mullahs who succeeded the shah and who jail pro-democracy activists, shut newspapers that they consider liberal and try to steal parliamentary elections should remember that the shah's reign lasted a bit less than 26 years.
Revolution may not be in the air, but there is no doubting that many Iranians despise the hard-line clerics as much as their parents did the shah.
The 1997 election of a moderate Islamic scholar, President Mohammad Khatami, raised hopes of political liberalization. His reelection in 2001 by a wide margin kept those hopes alive despite his inability to sway Iran's supreme arbiters, the religious authority known as the Guardian Council.
Just as important as Khatami's presence has been the election to Iran's parliament of reformers unhappy with the fundamentalists; the 290 members now include an estimated 200 reformers.
Unfortunately, the anti-reform forces still get the last word. Over the weekend, members of Iran's parliament announced that the Guardian Council had disqualified more than 25% — perhaps as many as half — of the more than 8,000 candidates in next month's elections, many would-be reformers among them.
This should be a make-or-break issue for Khatami. He has already watched the Guardian Council veto laws that parliament passed to reduce political prosecutions, expand press freedoms and investigate charges of torture by the brutal security forces.
The president should confront the council and the country's "supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and demand that they reverse the disqualifications or face Khatami's resignation.
The conservatives, stunned by their losses in the 2000 parliamentary elections, don't want to risk losing again. Their claims that those disqualified from running had violated fundamentalist rules of Islam or committed vague crimes are laughable.
Half of Iranians are under age 20, so they did not experience the euphoria that greeted the overthrow of the shah and his corrupt, brutal security forces.
Instead, the young see nearly half the population living in poverty despite great oil and natural gas reserves. They chafe under social and political restrictions imposed by Khamenei and the six clerics he appoints to the 12-member Guardian Council.
Any stiffening of repression may lead to violent protest, another match lighting tinder in a volatile region. Iranians suffered in one way under the secular shah and in another under the religious excesses of the ayatollahs. Offering elections but removing the right to freely run for office is a step backward into the shadows of dictatorship.
The Bush Democrats
By DAVID BROOKS
In 2000, the American electorate was evenly divided. Now, as we enter another voting season, the Gallup Organization has released a study, based on 40,000 interviews, that shows that 45.5 percent of voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and 45.2 percent identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.
So is that it? After Sept. 11, the Iraq war and the Madonna-Britney kiss, could it really be that we are back to where we started? Since 2000, tens of millions of people have moved, divorced and converted; can it really be that everything in America changes except politics?
Yes and no. Yes, the political divides today do look a lot like the ones that split the nation in 2000. But no. When you look beneath the headline data, you see at least one important change. The events of the past three years have brought to the foreground issues that divide Democrats, and pushed to the background issues that divide Republicans.
The first result is that the Republican Party is more unified than ever before. Ninety-one percent of Republicans approve of the job President Bush is doing. In 1992, Bush's father didn't have anything like that level of support, and even the Reagan administration was split between so-called pragmatists and ideologues.
Today's Republicans not only like Bush personally, they also overwhelmingly support his policies. According to a Pew Center study, 85 percent of Republicans support the war in Iraq, 82 percent believe that pre-emptive war is justified, and 72 percent believe the U.S. is justified in holding terror suspects without trial.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are divided on all these issues. According to the same Pew survey, 54 percent of Democrats oppose the war in Iraq, but 39 percent support it. Forty-four percent of Democrats oppose the pre-emptive war doctrine, but 52 percent support it. Forty-seven percent of Democrats oppose holding terror suspects without trial, but 46 percent are in favor.
Liberals have all the passion these days. They dominate campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire, but they have not won over half the voters in their own party.
The Democrats are also divided on major domestic issues. The Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg surveyed Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Democrats there were split on Nafta and gay marriage and on whether to roll back all the Bush tax cuts.
The biggest divide among Democrats is metaphysical. Some portion of the party, led by Howard Dean, is so disgusted by Republicans that it does not believe it is possible to work with such people. Meanwhile, others, including Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, accept that Republicans are in power, are willing to work with them and take a starkly different approach to politics.
This situation — Republican unity and Democratic fissures — means that the Democratic vote is less cohesive than the G.O.P. vote, at least on the presidential level. In a Bush-Dean matchup, 20 percent of Democrats would vote for Bush, according to a CBS poll, while only 3 percent of Republicans would vote for Dean. Over all, Bush leads Dean by 20 points. And in Iowa and New Hampshire, swing states where voters know both candidates well, Bush is up by significant margins.
In other words, at least at the moment, Bush has crashed through the 45/45 partisan divide. He is a polarizing figure, but there are many more people who support him than oppose him. And this support is not merely personal; it is built into the issue landscape. According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, 57 percent of Americans say they are more likely to support a candidate who supported going to war in Iraq, while only 35 percent say they would be less likely. According to Pew, 59 percent believe that the war in Iraq has helped in the broader war on terror.
All of this means two things. First, as we dive into this period of intense Democratic primary competition, it's worth keeping in mind that Democratic primary voters are a misleading snapshot of the electorate as a whole. Second, while the nation remains closely divided over all, and gravitational pressures will cause the general election to tighten, it is wrong to think that the electorate is fixed. There are millions of people who may lean toward one party or another, but who can be persuaded to support either presidential candidate.
At the moment, many are supporting Bush.
By DAVID BROOKS
In 2000, the American electorate was evenly divided. Now, as we enter another voting season, the Gallup Organization has released a study, based on 40,000 interviews, that shows that 45.5 percent of voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and 45.2 percent identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.
So is that it? After Sept. 11, the Iraq war and the Madonna-Britney kiss, could it really be that we are back to where we started? Since 2000, tens of millions of people have moved, divorced and converted; can it really be that everything in America changes except politics?
Yes and no. Yes, the political divides today do look a lot like the ones that split the nation in 2000. But no. When you look beneath the headline data, you see at least one important change. The events of the past three years have brought to the foreground issues that divide Democrats, and pushed to the background issues that divide Republicans.
The first result is that the Republican Party is more unified than ever before. Ninety-one percent of Republicans approve of the job President Bush is doing. In 1992, Bush's father didn't have anything like that level of support, and even the Reagan administration was split between so-called pragmatists and ideologues.
Today's Republicans not only like Bush personally, they also overwhelmingly support his policies. According to a Pew Center study, 85 percent of Republicans support the war in Iraq, 82 percent believe that pre-emptive war is justified, and 72 percent believe the U.S. is justified in holding terror suspects without trial.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are divided on all these issues. According to the same Pew survey, 54 percent of Democrats oppose the war in Iraq, but 39 percent support it. Forty-four percent of Democrats oppose the pre-emptive war doctrine, but 52 percent support it. Forty-seven percent of Democrats oppose holding terror suspects without trial, but 46 percent are in favor.
Liberals have all the passion these days. They dominate campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire, but they have not won over half the voters in their own party.
The Democrats are also divided on major domestic issues. The Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg surveyed Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Democrats there were split on Nafta and gay marriage and on whether to roll back all the Bush tax cuts.
The biggest divide among Democrats is metaphysical. Some portion of the party, led by Howard Dean, is so disgusted by Republicans that it does not believe it is possible to work with such people. Meanwhile, others, including Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, accept that Republicans are in power, are willing to work with them and take a starkly different approach to politics.
This situation — Republican unity and Democratic fissures — means that the Democratic vote is less cohesive than the G.O.P. vote, at least on the presidential level. In a Bush-Dean matchup, 20 percent of Democrats would vote for Bush, according to a CBS poll, while only 3 percent of Republicans would vote for Dean. Over all, Bush leads Dean by 20 points. And in Iowa and New Hampshire, swing states where voters know both candidates well, Bush is up by significant margins.
In other words, at least at the moment, Bush has crashed through the 45/45 partisan divide. He is a polarizing figure, but there are many more people who support him than oppose him. And this support is not merely personal; it is built into the issue landscape. According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, 57 percent of Americans say they are more likely to support a candidate who supported going to war in Iraq, while only 35 percent say they would be less likely. According to Pew, 59 percent believe that the war in Iraq has helped in the broader war on terror.
All of this means two things. First, as we dive into this period of intense Democratic primary competition, it's worth keeping in mind that Democratic primary voters are a misleading snapshot of the electorate as a whole. Second, while the nation remains closely divided over all, and gravitational pressures will cause the general election to tighten, it is wrong to think that the electorate is fixed. There are millions of people who may lean toward one party or another, but who can be persuaded to support either presidential candidate.
At the moment, many are supporting Bush.
Monday, January 12, 2004
<A Spartan Athens
America today.>
Many people have noted the influence of Greece on American architecture and early culture. Students at Harvard, Princeton, and other major universities during the Founding period of the U.S. (1770-1800) faced tough Greek exams, and made annual declamations in Greek. Aristotle's ethical and political writings were especially influential, along with Greek historians and dramatists. Several of our 50 states named one of its cities "Athens" — and a great many of our school sports teams call themselves "Spartans." (One of the best calls its athletes "the Trojans.") The United States is self-consciously a child of the ancient civilization of Greece and Rome.
During long periods, America looks too pacific to be a threat to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. Too much like Athens gone soft. But at times such as the present — with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — the Spartan dimension of our civilization becomes visible to all doubters. The biggest thing that most Europeans don't know about America is Spartan side. Our Founders chose the eagle as the symbol for the nation because the eagle is supreme in war, seeing unblinkingly and at great distances. Once fixed on its prey, the eagle is not easily deterred.
Our Founders well knew that democracy itself softens manners, tames — even coddles — the human spirit, and pulls great spirits down to a lower common level. No democracy will long survive, they knew, that does not toughen itself to face adversity, to raise up warriors, and to keep ready a warlike spirit. A democratic army should be small, under civilian control, they insisted, kept safely away from political power, but committed to keeping those who serve in it fearless and invincible.
In a word, in order to survive and to prosper, democracies need to infuse a Spartan spirit into their Athenian thinking. To maintain the peace, prepare for war. A democracy too soft will soon perish.
In this respect, Time magazine was wise to choose as its "Man of the Year" of 2003 "The U.S. Soldier." A mere 100 of our best-trained "green berets," dropped stealthily into Afghanistan to hook up with the Afghan resistance, brought down entrenched Taliban power in a matter of 50 days. They were aided by spectacular air power, but what made that air power so deadly were the direct aiming devices focused on targets by the green berets. At times these most advanced of warriors rode about the Afghan countryside on horseback, in rough 19th-century cloaks and scarves, directing the airplanes with radar and targeting beams focused on enemy forces hidden in the mountains.
Before the war in Iraq, European, and American critics predicted enormous difficulties, massive casualties, chemical, and biological warfare unleashed, house-to-house fighting, vast destruction of cities and infrastructure. If I had predicted on my visit to Rome last February that in the first nine months of fighting there would be fewer than 300 Americans dead (i.e., by December 16); that virtually no bridges or highways or oil wells would be destroyed; and that not one single city village would be leveled, peaceniks would have scoffed. I remember one cardinal in the Vatican predicting on Vatican Radio that there would be a million deaths in Iraq. Challenged, he repeated it: a million. That didn't happen, not even a tiny fraction of that. There were virtually no refugees — the people of Iraq trusted the Americans and waited in place.
It was one of the quickest, most thorough acts of liberation in history.
Yet there are still people in Europe, not least at the Jesuit monthly Civilta Cattolica, who write that the motive for the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan is not to deny support and bases to terrorists. The motive, they insist, is oil.
One wonders if those who make such accusations know how to do a profit-loss statement. Can't they see that U.S. costs in Iraq alone have gone over $200 billion, whereas the entire annual GDP of Iraq is only $22 billion? At that rate, it would take 20 years for such an investment (which will probably have to increase by a lot over the next few years) even to be recouped. It will never show a profit.
But the greatest blindness of the critics of the U.S. is not financial accounting. It is spiritual. They do not see that safety from terrorism means not only depriving terrorists of bases, but also building democracy and a dynamic economy for the Iraqi people, as an alternative to terrorism. Creating such an alternative, not only for Iraq, but for all the young people of the Mideast, is worth a lot more than 200 million dollars. Such costs and benefits are not counted in dollars.
Since at least 1941, the people of the United States have spent far more than any other people on earth (more, perhaps, than all the other people on earth together), first, to defeat Fascism, second, to defeat Communism, and now to defeat terrorism. We are not complaining. It was worth it. If you want to see our greatest monument, look around you.
It may be comfortable for Europeans to keep repeating, "War is always a defeat for humankind." It would have been far more comfortable for the American people to have believed that in 1941. Yet could we really have left Europe, Asia, and so many other places to fend for themselves? The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor answered that question. The Japanese thought we were Athens gone soft. They didn't know American Sparta.
Near my home, two cars bear the simple-minded bumper sticker, WAR IS NEVER THE ANSWER. I have to restrain myself every day from inserting with a thick red crayon a modifier: EXCEPT FOR SLAVERY, FASCISM, COMMUNISM, AND TERRORISM.
In other words: "Except for slavery in the U.S. in 1861-65, Hitler in Europe in 1941-45, the Japanese in the Pacific, the bloody USSR from 1917-1991, and now, terrorism." All these have required war, and it would have been unjust to fail to conduct these wars.
Saint Augustine seems to have been correct in Book xviii of The City of God, that war will keep appearing as long as the City of Man rolls on. To do justice in this world, often enough war is necessary, despite its awful burdens and constraints. Not to fight a war so required would be a sin against justice. We speak of "just wars" because sometimes justice requires war.
If one examines the many places in which American armies became engaged after 1941, one is likely to find today the most prosperous, freest, most democratic nations in the history of the world. When Americans go to war, the first domestic urgency is to win quickly, and the second urgent priority is just as quickly to find "an exit strategy." Americans do not want to stay. They do not want empire. They want to go home.
To tell the unpretty truth, we like Americans better than we like anyone else. And we have a hard enough time governing ourselves, without taking on the headaches of governing other peoples. The peoples of Europe for instance, you have to admit, are difficult. Thank God we don't have to govern them. Although eating in France is sheer delight, just thinking of governing the French strikes ice into my heart.
America today.>
Many people have noted the influence of Greece on American architecture and early culture. Students at Harvard, Princeton, and other major universities during the Founding period of the U.S. (1770-1800) faced tough Greek exams, and made annual declamations in Greek. Aristotle's ethical and political writings were especially influential, along with Greek historians and dramatists. Several of our 50 states named one of its cities "Athens" — and a great many of our school sports teams call themselves "Spartans." (One of the best calls its athletes "the Trojans.") The United States is self-consciously a child of the ancient civilization of Greece and Rome.
During long periods, America looks too pacific to be a threat to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. Too much like Athens gone soft. But at times such as the present — with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — the Spartan dimension of our civilization becomes visible to all doubters. The biggest thing that most Europeans don't know about America is Spartan side. Our Founders chose the eagle as the symbol for the nation because the eagle is supreme in war, seeing unblinkingly and at great distances. Once fixed on its prey, the eagle is not easily deterred.
Our Founders well knew that democracy itself softens manners, tames — even coddles — the human spirit, and pulls great spirits down to a lower common level. No democracy will long survive, they knew, that does not toughen itself to face adversity, to raise up warriors, and to keep ready a warlike spirit. A democratic army should be small, under civilian control, they insisted, kept safely away from political power, but committed to keeping those who serve in it fearless and invincible.
In a word, in order to survive and to prosper, democracies need to infuse a Spartan spirit into their Athenian thinking. To maintain the peace, prepare for war. A democracy too soft will soon perish.
In this respect, Time magazine was wise to choose as its "Man of the Year" of 2003 "The U.S. Soldier." A mere 100 of our best-trained "green berets," dropped stealthily into Afghanistan to hook up with the Afghan resistance, brought down entrenched Taliban power in a matter of 50 days. They were aided by spectacular air power, but what made that air power so deadly were the direct aiming devices focused on targets by the green berets. At times these most advanced of warriors rode about the Afghan countryside on horseback, in rough 19th-century cloaks and scarves, directing the airplanes with radar and targeting beams focused on enemy forces hidden in the mountains.
Before the war in Iraq, European, and American critics predicted enormous difficulties, massive casualties, chemical, and biological warfare unleashed, house-to-house fighting, vast destruction of cities and infrastructure. If I had predicted on my visit to Rome last February that in the first nine months of fighting there would be fewer than 300 Americans dead (i.e., by December 16); that virtually no bridges or highways or oil wells would be destroyed; and that not one single city village would be leveled, peaceniks would have scoffed. I remember one cardinal in the Vatican predicting on Vatican Radio that there would be a million deaths in Iraq. Challenged, he repeated it: a million. That didn't happen, not even a tiny fraction of that. There were virtually no refugees — the people of Iraq trusted the Americans and waited in place.
It was one of the quickest, most thorough acts of liberation in history.
Yet there are still people in Europe, not least at the Jesuit monthly Civilta Cattolica, who write that the motive for the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan is not to deny support and bases to terrorists. The motive, they insist, is oil.
One wonders if those who make such accusations know how to do a profit-loss statement. Can't they see that U.S. costs in Iraq alone have gone over $200 billion, whereas the entire annual GDP of Iraq is only $22 billion? At that rate, it would take 20 years for such an investment (which will probably have to increase by a lot over the next few years) even to be recouped. It will never show a profit.
But the greatest blindness of the critics of the U.S. is not financial accounting. It is spiritual. They do not see that safety from terrorism means not only depriving terrorists of bases, but also building democracy and a dynamic economy for the Iraqi people, as an alternative to terrorism. Creating such an alternative, not only for Iraq, but for all the young people of the Mideast, is worth a lot more than 200 million dollars. Such costs and benefits are not counted in dollars.
Since at least 1941, the people of the United States have spent far more than any other people on earth (more, perhaps, than all the other people on earth together), first, to defeat Fascism, second, to defeat Communism, and now to defeat terrorism. We are not complaining. It was worth it. If you want to see our greatest monument, look around you.
It may be comfortable for Europeans to keep repeating, "War is always a defeat for humankind." It would have been far more comfortable for the American people to have believed that in 1941. Yet could we really have left Europe, Asia, and so many other places to fend for themselves? The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor answered that question. The Japanese thought we were Athens gone soft. They didn't know American Sparta.
Near my home, two cars bear the simple-minded bumper sticker, WAR IS NEVER THE ANSWER. I have to restrain myself every day from inserting with a thick red crayon a modifier: EXCEPT FOR SLAVERY, FASCISM, COMMUNISM, AND TERRORISM.
In other words: "Except for slavery in the U.S. in 1861-65, Hitler in Europe in 1941-45, the Japanese in the Pacific, the bloody USSR from 1917-1991, and now, terrorism." All these have required war, and it would have been unjust to fail to conduct these wars.
Saint Augustine seems to have been correct in Book xviii of The City of God, that war will keep appearing as long as the City of Man rolls on. To do justice in this world, often enough war is necessary, despite its awful burdens and constraints. Not to fight a war so required would be a sin against justice. We speak of "just wars" because sometimes justice requires war.
If one examines the many places in which American armies became engaged after 1941, one is likely to find today the most prosperous, freest, most democratic nations in the history of the world. When Americans go to war, the first domestic urgency is to win quickly, and the second urgent priority is just as quickly to find "an exit strategy." Americans do not want to stay. They do not want empire. They want to go home.
To tell the unpretty truth, we like Americans better than we like anyone else. And we have a hard enough time governing ourselves, without taking on the headaches of governing other peoples. The peoples of Europe for instance, you have to admit, are difficult. Thank God we don't have to govern them. Although eating in France is sheer delight, just thinking of governing the French strikes ice into my heart.
Europe Gets Real: The New Security Strategy Shows the EU's Geopolitical Maturity
by
Peter van Ham
On December 12, 2003, the European Council approved the long-awaited European Security Strategy entitled A Secure Europe in a Better World. The EU finally has a concise document that offers a coherent assessment of today's security threats and Europe's policy responses. The Iraqi imbroglio confirmed that such an attempt to forge a shared European security culture was long overdue. Past attempts within the Western European Union (WEU)-the EU's now defunct defence arm-to formulate such a security paper had failed to set clear priorities and adequate strategic options. The EU's Security Strategy does exactly that, aiming to address the weakest link in Europe's role as an emerging global power: the connection between its lofty objectives and its uncoordinated policy instruments.
A draft-version of the strategy was first published at the EU's Thessaloniki summit last June. Often referred to as the "Solana paper" (after the EU's foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana), the text was intensely scrutinized not only by EU member states, but also by strategic analysts and policymakers in Washington D.C. There are three key reasons for the EU to finally agree upon a shared security strategy.
First, a shared security strategy aims to reposition the EU in the post-9/11 security environment by formulating a cohesive joint strategy for advancing Europe's economic and political interests. The EU often takes pride in its "soft power," the ability to influence events by diplomatic rather than coercive means. But influenced by the British diplomat Robert Cooper-the most prominent strategic thinker within the European Council-the EU Strategy now aims to go beyond mere "soft power" and "get real." Cooper argues that Europe needs to understand that the world beyond the cozy confines of today's postmodern EU is still characterized by hard-nosed Realpolitik where military power remains an essential policy instrument to avert threats and get things done. Cooper believes that Europe can no longer wait and hope that the rest of the world will soon recognize and emulate the bliss of its own oft-heralded model of Kantian peace and prosperity. Instead, the EU has to become an active and, if necessary, forceful global player prepared to fight for its own interests. Obviously, Cooper's ideas have provoked heated debates within the EU, ruffling feathers of all kinds, especially those of member states who cling to the obsolete Zivilmacht model.
Taking these qualms into account, the draft EU Security Strategy has been changed on a number of important points. The document still refers to five key security challenges for Europe: terrorism; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); regional conflict; state failure; and organized crime. However, the opponents of a tough EU-stance have succeeded in removing earlier references to a strategy of "preemption" from the final text. Member states still agree, however, that "in an era of globalization, distant threats may be of as much concern as those that are near at hand," and that "when necessary, robust intervention" is called for. The document also calls for what it now labels "preventive engagement," but without clear indications as to when the use of military force may be considered legitimate to prevent (for example) WMD-proliferation or humanitarian emergencies.
These alterations have been inspired by the political will to put some distance between the EU and the United States. This seems to be paradoxical, since the second reason for the EU to agree on a joint Strategy was to repair the damaged transatlantic relationship and prove Europe's continued relevance to Washington's security agenda. To that end, the EU document makes frequent and prominent mention of America's crucial role. It opens with the remark that "the United States has played a critical role in European integration and European security," and closes with the statement, "acting together, the European Union and the United States can be a formidable force for good in the world." These words do not only cater to the Atlanticists in Europe who may otherwise have been wary of EU policies too far outside the traditional NATO-mainstream. They are also intended to convince skeptics within the Bush administration that a Europe with global political ambitions does not challenge the United States but instead aims to position itself as a strategic partner. To make this message unmistakably clear, the paper confirms that the "EU-NATO permanent arrangements, in particular Berlin Plus" is a reflection of "our [i.e., the transatlantic] common determination to tackle the challenges of the new century."
What is more, the EU Strategy acknowledges that multilateralism needs to be enforced and that Europe "must therefore be ready to act when their rules are broken." The document also emphasizes that "the best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states." Both statements should be read in the light of the recent policy declarations by President Bush that call for both effective multilateralism and the democratization of the greater Middle East. For the EU, they imply a remarkable shift towards accepting the conceptual underpinnings of the current U.S. administration's worldview.
A final reason for formulating a European security document is to contain the looming threat of strategic fragmentation within the EU itself. The debate around Iraq has laid bare the limits of the Union's institutional framework to forge consensus on matters of supreme strategic importance. The European Convention was supposed to fix these structural problems and prepare the EU for the accession of ten new members in May 2004. Nice ideas such as creating the new post of European "foreign minister" and the introduction of simplified decision-making rules were rejected (or at least postponed) at the December 2003 summit. But despite all the doom and gloom over the failed European Convention, the EU Security Strategy has now been finally adopted, offering an acquis stratégique by establishing priorities and setting clear policy goals.
This will be all the more important since the enlarged EU will see more "structured cooperation" than in the past. Coalitions of "able and willing" member states will be tempted to take the lead without waiting for the EU-25 to reach consensus. Last year's controversy over the "Tervuren-option" on a possible autonomous European military headquarters (initiated by France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg) illustrates these centrifugal tendencies within the EU on security and defense matters. The EU's new Security Strategy may not be able to paper over all the existing political cracks within Europe and the transatlantic relationship. It is, however, a necessary step in the slow and painful process towards the EU's geopolitical maturity. Without it, both the EU and the transatlantic relationship would be a lot worse off.
Peter van Ham is Deputy Head of Studies at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations "Clingendael" in the Hague, and Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium).
by
Peter van Ham
On December 12, 2003, the European Council approved the long-awaited European Security Strategy entitled A Secure Europe in a Better World. The EU finally has a concise document that offers a coherent assessment of today's security threats and Europe's policy responses. The Iraqi imbroglio confirmed that such an attempt to forge a shared European security culture was long overdue. Past attempts within the Western European Union (WEU)-the EU's now defunct defence arm-to formulate such a security paper had failed to set clear priorities and adequate strategic options. The EU's Security Strategy does exactly that, aiming to address the weakest link in Europe's role as an emerging global power: the connection between its lofty objectives and its uncoordinated policy instruments.
A draft-version of the strategy was first published at the EU's Thessaloniki summit last June. Often referred to as the "Solana paper" (after the EU's foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana), the text was intensely scrutinized not only by EU member states, but also by strategic analysts and policymakers in Washington D.C. There are three key reasons for the EU to finally agree upon a shared security strategy.
First, a shared security strategy aims to reposition the EU in the post-9/11 security environment by formulating a cohesive joint strategy for advancing Europe's economic and political interests. The EU often takes pride in its "soft power," the ability to influence events by diplomatic rather than coercive means. But influenced by the British diplomat Robert Cooper-the most prominent strategic thinker within the European Council-the EU Strategy now aims to go beyond mere "soft power" and "get real." Cooper argues that Europe needs to understand that the world beyond the cozy confines of today's postmodern EU is still characterized by hard-nosed Realpolitik where military power remains an essential policy instrument to avert threats and get things done. Cooper believes that Europe can no longer wait and hope that the rest of the world will soon recognize and emulate the bliss of its own oft-heralded model of Kantian peace and prosperity. Instead, the EU has to become an active and, if necessary, forceful global player prepared to fight for its own interests. Obviously, Cooper's ideas have provoked heated debates within the EU, ruffling feathers of all kinds, especially those of member states who cling to the obsolete Zivilmacht model.
Taking these qualms into account, the draft EU Security Strategy has been changed on a number of important points. The document still refers to five key security challenges for Europe: terrorism; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); regional conflict; state failure; and organized crime. However, the opponents of a tough EU-stance have succeeded in removing earlier references to a strategy of "preemption" from the final text. Member states still agree, however, that "in an era of globalization, distant threats may be of as much concern as those that are near at hand," and that "when necessary, robust intervention" is called for. The document also calls for what it now labels "preventive engagement," but without clear indications as to when the use of military force may be considered legitimate to prevent (for example) WMD-proliferation or humanitarian emergencies.
These alterations have been inspired by the political will to put some distance between the EU and the United States. This seems to be paradoxical, since the second reason for the EU to agree on a joint Strategy was to repair the damaged transatlantic relationship and prove Europe's continued relevance to Washington's security agenda. To that end, the EU document makes frequent and prominent mention of America's crucial role. It opens with the remark that "the United States has played a critical role in European integration and European security," and closes with the statement, "acting together, the European Union and the United States can be a formidable force for good in the world." These words do not only cater to the Atlanticists in Europe who may otherwise have been wary of EU policies too far outside the traditional NATO-mainstream. They are also intended to convince skeptics within the Bush administration that a Europe with global political ambitions does not challenge the United States but instead aims to position itself as a strategic partner. To make this message unmistakably clear, the paper confirms that the "EU-NATO permanent arrangements, in particular Berlin Plus" is a reflection of "our [i.e., the transatlantic] common determination to tackle the challenges of the new century."
What is more, the EU Strategy acknowledges that multilateralism needs to be enforced and that Europe "must therefore be ready to act when their rules are broken." The document also emphasizes that "the best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states." Both statements should be read in the light of the recent policy declarations by President Bush that call for both effective multilateralism and the democratization of the greater Middle East. For the EU, they imply a remarkable shift towards accepting the conceptual underpinnings of the current U.S. administration's worldview.
A final reason for formulating a European security document is to contain the looming threat of strategic fragmentation within the EU itself. The debate around Iraq has laid bare the limits of the Union's institutional framework to forge consensus on matters of supreme strategic importance. The European Convention was supposed to fix these structural problems and prepare the EU for the accession of ten new members in May 2004. Nice ideas such as creating the new post of European "foreign minister" and the introduction of simplified decision-making rules were rejected (or at least postponed) at the December 2003 summit. But despite all the doom and gloom over the failed European Convention, the EU Security Strategy has now been finally adopted, offering an acquis stratégique by establishing priorities and setting clear policy goals.
This will be all the more important since the enlarged EU will see more "structured cooperation" than in the past. Coalitions of "able and willing" member states will be tempted to take the lead without waiting for the EU-25 to reach consensus. Last year's controversy over the "Tervuren-option" on a possible autonomous European military headquarters (initiated by France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg) illustrates these centrifugal tendencies within the EU on security and defense matters. The EU's new Security Strategy may not be able to paper over all the existing political cracks within Europe and the transatlantic relationship. It is, however, a necessary step in the slow and painful process towards the EU's geopolitical maturity. Without it, both the EU and the transatlantic relationship would be a lot worse off.
Peter van Ham is Deputy Head of Studies at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations "Clingendael" in the Hague, and Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium).
Sunday, January 11, 2004
War of Ideas, Part 2
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 11, 2004
While visiting Istanbul the other day, I took a long walk along the Bosporus near Topkapi Palace. There is nothing like standing at this stunning intersection of Europe and Asia to think about the clash of civilizations — and how we might avoid it. Make no mistake: we are living at a remarkable hinge of history and it's not clear how it's going to swing.
What is clear is that Osama bin Laden achieved his aim: 9/11 sparked real tensions between the Judeo-Christian West and the Muslim East. Preachers on both sides now openly denounce each other's faith. Whether these tensions explode into a real clash of civilizations will depend a great deal on whether we build bridges or dig ditches between the West and Islam in three key places — Turkey, Iraq and Israel-Palestine.
Let's start with Turkey — the only Muslim, free-market democracy in Europe. I happened to be in Istanbul when the street outside one of the two synagogues that were suicide-bombed on Nov. 15 was reopened. Three things struck me: First, the chief rabbi of Turkey appeared at the ceremony, hand in hand with the top Muslim cleric of Istanbul and the local mayor, while crowds in the street threw red carnations on them. Second, the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who comes from an Islamist party, paid a visit to the chief rabbi — the first time a Turkish prime minister had ever called on the chief rabbi. Third, and most revealing, was the statement made by the father of one of the Turkish suicide bombers who hit the synagogues.
"We are a respectful family who love our nation, flag and the Koran," the grieving father, Sefik Elaltuntas, told the Zaman newspaper. "But we cannot understand why this child had done the thing he had done . . . First, let us meet with the chief rabbi of our Jewish brothers. Let me hug him. Let me kiss his hands and flowing robe. Let me apologize in the name of my son and offer my condolences for the deaths. . . . We will be damned if we do not reconcile with them."
The same newspaper also carried a quote from Cemil Cicek, the Turkish government spokesman, who said: "The Islamic world should take stringent measures against terrorism without any `buts' or `howevers.' "
There is a message here: Context matters. Turkish politicians are not intimidated by religious fundamentalists, because — unlike too many Arab politicians — they have their own legitimacy that comes from being democratically elected. At the same time, the Turkish parents of suicide bombers don't all celebrate their children's suicide. They are not afraid to denounce this barbarism, because they live in a free society where such things are considered shameful and alien to the moderate Turkish brand of Islam — which has always embraced religious pluralism and which most Turks feel is the "real" Islam.
For all these reasons, if we want to help moderates win the war of ideas within the Muslim world, we must help strengthen Turkey as a model of democracy, modernism, moderation and Islam all working together. Nothing would do that more than having Turkey be made a member of the European Union — which the E.U. will basically decide this year. Turkey has undertaken a huge number of reforms to get itself ready for E.U. membership. If, after all it has done, the E.U. shuts the door on Turkey, extremists all over the Muslim world will say to the moderates: "See, we told you so — it's a Christian club and we're never going to be let in. So why bother adapting to their rules?"
I think Turkey's membership in the E.U. is so important that the U.S. should consider subsidizing the E.U. to make it easier for Turkey to be admitted. If that fails, we should offer to bring Turkey into Nafta, even though it would be very complicated.
"If the E.U. creates some pretext and says `no' to Turkey, after we have done all this, I am sure the E.U. will lose and the world will lose," Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, told me in Ankara. "If Turkey is admitted, the E.U. is going to win and world peace is going to win. This would be a gift to the Muslim world. . . . When I travel to other Muslim countries — Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia — they are proud of what we are doing. They are proud of our process [of political and economic reform to join the E.U.]. They mention this to me. They ask, `How is this going?' "
Yes, everyone is watching, which is why the E.U. would be making a huge mistake — a hinge of history mistake — if it digs a ditch around Turkey instead of building a bridge.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 11, 2004
While visiting Istanbul the other day, I took a long walk along the Bosporus near Topkapi Palace. There is nothing like standing at this stunning intersection of Europe and Asia to think about the clash of civilizations — and how we might avoid it. Make no mistake: we are living at a remarkable hinge of history and it's not clear how it's going to swing.
What is clear is that Osama bin Laden achieved his aim: 9/11 sparked real tensions between the Judeo-Christian West and the Muslim East. Preachers on both sides now openly denounce each other's faith. Whether these tensions explode into a real clash of civilizations will depend a great deal on whether we build bridges or dig ditches between the West and Islam in three key places — Turkey, Iraq and Israel-Palestine.
Let's start with Turkey — the only Muslim, free-market democracy in Europe. I happened to be in Istanbul when the street outside one of the two synagogues that were suicide-bombed on Nov. 15 was reopened. Three things struck me: First, the chief rabbi of Turkey appeared at the ceremony, hand in hand with the top Muslim cleric of Istanbul and the local mayor, while crowds in the street threw red carnations on them. Second, the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who comes from an Islamist party, paid a visit to the chief rabbi — the first time a Turkish prime minister had ever called on the chief rabbi. Third, and most revealing, was the statement made by the father of one of the Turkish suicide bombers who hit the synagogues.
"We are a respectful family who love our nation, flag and the Koran," the grieving father, Sefik Elaltuntas, told the Zaman newspaper. "But we cannot understand why this child had done the thing he had done . . . First, let us meet with the chief rabbi of our Jewish brothers. Let me hug him. Let me kiss his hands and flowing robe. Let me apologize in the name of my son and offer my condolences for the deaths. . . . We will be damned if we do not reconcile with them."
The same newspaper also carried a quote from Cemil Cicek, the Turkish government spokesman, who said: "The Islamic world should take stringent measures against terrorism without any `buts' or `howevers.' "
There is a message here: Context matters. Turkish politicians are not intimidated by religious fundamentalists, because — unlike too many Arab politicians — they have their own legitimacy that comes from being democratically elected. At the same time, the Turkish parents of suicide bombers don't all celebrate their children's suicide. They are not afraid to denounce this barbarism, because they live in a free society where such things are considered shameful and alien to the moderate Turkish brand of Islam — which has always embraced religious pluralism and which most Turks feel is the "real" Islam.
For all these reasons, if we want to help moderates win the war of ideas within the Muslim world, we must help strengthen Turkey as a model of democracy, modernism, moderation and Islam all working together. Nothing would do that more than having Turkey be made a member of the European Union — which the E.U. will basically decide this year. Turkey has undertaken a huge number of reforms to get itself ready for E.U. membership. If, after all it has done, the E.U. shuts the door on Turkey, extremists all over the Muslim world will say to the moderates: "See, we told you so — it's a Christian club and we're never going to be let in. So why bother adapting to their rules?"
I think Turkey's membership in the E.U. is so important that the U.S. should consider subsidizing the E.U. to make it easier for Turkey to be admitted. If that fails, we should offer to bring Turkey into Nafta, even though it would be very complicated.
"If the E.U. creates some pretext and says `no' to Turkey, after we have done all this, I am sure the E.U. will lose and the world will lose," Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, told me in Ankara. "If Turkey is admitted, the E.U. is going to win and world peace is going to win. This would be a gift to the Muslim world. . . . When I travel to other Muslim countries — Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia — they are proud of what we are doing. They are proud of our process [of political and economic reform to join the E.U.]. They mention this to me. They ask, `How is this going?' "
Yes, everyone is watching, which is why the E.U. would be making a huge mistake — a hinge of history mistake — if it digs a ditch around Turkey instead of building a bridge.
