Thursday, September 11, 2003
What could we ever have in common with these people?
Saudi police say Barbie dolls a threat to morality
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) --Saudi Arabia's religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the "Jewish" toy -- already banned in the kingdom -- are offensive to Islam.
The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as the religious police are officially known, lists the dolls on a section of its Web site devoted to items deemed offensive to the conservative Saudi interpretation of Islam.
"Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers and be careful," said a poster on the site.
The poster, plastered with pictures of Barbie in short dresses and tight pants, and with a few of her accessories, reads: "A strange request. A little girl asks her mother: Mother, I want jeans, a low-cut shirt, and a swimsuit like Barbie."
Such posters are distributed to schools and hung in the streets by the religious police, or muttawa, an independent body affiliated with the office of the Prime Minister.
Vice police officials were not available for comment Monday.
Sheik Abdulla al-Merdas, a preacher in a Riyadh mosque, said the muttawa take their anti-Barbie campaign to the shops, confiscating dolls from sellers and imposing a fine.
Although illegal, Barbies, the creation of California-based Mattel Inc., are found on the black market, where a contraband doll could cost 100 riyals (US$27) or more.
"It is no problem that little girls play with dolls. But these dolls should not have the developed body of a woman, and wear revealing clothes," al-Merdas said.
"These revealing clothes will be imprinted in their minds and they will refuse to wear the clothes we are used to as Muslims," the sheik said.
Women in Saudi Arabia must cover themselves from head to toe with a black cloak in public. They are not allowed to drive and cannot go out in public unaccompanied by a male family member.
Other items listed as violations on the site included Valentine's Day gifts, perfume bottles in the shape of women's bodies, clothing with logos that include a cross, and decorative copies of religious items -- offensive because they could be damaged and thus insult Islam.
An exhibition of all the violating items is found in the holy city of Medina, and mobile tours go around to schools and other public areas in the kingdom.
The muttawa act as a monitoring and punishing agency, propagating conservative Islamic beliefs according to the teachings of the puritan Wahhabi sect, adhered to the kingdom since the 18th century, and enforcing strict moral code.
The muttawa patrol the streets of the kingdom, preventing men from mingling with women, enforcing strict Islamic dress for women, chasing worshippers late for prayers, and punishing shop keepers who stay open during prayer hours. They sometimes work with a police officer who can enforce legal punishments on people deemed violators.
Saudi police say Barbie dolls a threat to morality
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) --Saudi Arabia's religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the "Jewish" toy -- already banned in the kingdom -- are offensive to Islam.
The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as the religious police are officially known, lists the dolls on a section of its Web site devoted to items deemed offensive to the conservative Saudi interpretation of Islam.
"Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers and be careful," said a poster on the site.
The poster, plastered with pictures of Barbie in short dresses and tight pants, and with a few of her accessories, reads: "A strange request. A little girl asks her mother: Mother, I want jeans, a low-cut shirt, and a swimsuit like Barbie."
Such posters are distributed to schools and hung in the streets by the religious police, or muttawa, an independent body affiliated with the office of the Prime Minister.
Vice police officials were not available for comment Monday.
Sheik Abdulla al-Merdas, a preacher in a Riyadh mosque, said the muttawa take their anti-Barbie campaign to the shops, confiscating dolls from sellers and imposing a fine.
Although illegal, Barbies, the creation of California-based Mattel Inc., are found on the black market, where a contraband doll could cost 100 riyals (US$27) or more.
"It is no problem that little girls play with dolls. But these dolls should not have the developed body of a woman, and wear revealing clothes," al-Merdas said.
"These revealing clothes will be imprinted in their minds and they will refuse to wear the clothes we are used to as Muslims," the sheik said.
Women in Saudi Arabia must cover themselves from head to toe with a black cloak in public. They are not allowed to drive and cannot go out in public unaccompanied by a male family member.
Other items listed as violations on the site included Valentine's Day gifts, perfume bottles in the shape of women's bodies, clothing with logos that include a cross, and decorative copies of religious items -- offensive because they could be damaged and thus insult Islam.
An exhibition of all the violating items is found in the holy city of Medina, and mobile tours go around to schools and other public areas in the kingdom.
The muttawa act as a monitoring and punishing agency, propagating conservative Islamic beliefs according to the teachings of the puritan Wahhabi sect, adhered to the kingdom since the 18th century, and enforcing strict moral code.
The muttawa patrol the streets of the kingdom, preventing men from mingling with women, enforcing strict Islamic dress for women, chasing worshippers late for prayers, and punishing shop keepers who stay open during prayer hours. They sometimes work with a police officer who can enforce legal punishments on people deemed violators.
Just one note for those of you who read this from the States.
When they tell you how much simpathy people in Europe felt for Americans before 9/11 and how much more they felt right after 9/11..... well, just don't believe them. It's a bunch of hogwash, believe me! For 15 years I've been hearing how bad we stink, how dumb we are, how unsophisticated, how primitive, how arrogant, how greedy, how insensitive, how ignorant and that our country is the source of all evil. I've hear the same thin over and over again, in Western Europe, in Asia, in the Arab World and in South America. But the spite Ihave always heard in the voices of the Europeans, has always remained unsurpassed.
When they tell you how much simpathy people in Europe felt for Americans before 9/11 and how much more they felt right after 9/11..... well, just don't believe them. It's a bunch of hogwash, believe me! For 15 years I've been hearing how bad we stink, how dumb we are, how unsophisticated, how primitive, how arrogant, how greedy, how insensitive, how ignorant and that our country is the source of all evil. I've hear the same thin over and over again, in Western Europe, in Asia, in the Arab World and in South America. But the spite Ihave always heard in the voices of the Europeans, has always remained unsurpassed.
September 11th 2003: For those who died, our prayers and our plea to God to comfort them more than others. For those who were left living with those images in their heads, the strength never to give up the fight against fascism and illiberalism, no matter what it will cost in terms of lives or treasure. America, please keep your chin up!
With sorrow, I must note that the Nation's best Newspaper has decided to remember the worst attack on our ideals and values EVER, with a load of America bashing:
Remembering, 2 years later
Richard Bernstein/NYT NYT
Thursday, September 11, 2003
U.S. is losing the sympathy of the world
BERLIN In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and support has given way in the months after the war in Iraq to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world public opinion in an unjustified and unilateral use of military force.
"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."
Across the globe, from Africa to Europe, South America to Southeast Asia, the war in Iraq has had a major impact on a public opinion that has moved generally from post-Sept. 11 sympathy to post-Iraq-war antipathy, or, at least to disappointment over what is seen as the sole remaining superpower's inclination to act pre-emptively with neither persuasive reasons nor United Nations approval.
To some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President George W. Bush, who is seen by many as, at best, an ineffective spokesman for American interests and, at worst, a gunslinging cowboy knocking over international treaties and bent on controlling the world's oil supplies, if not the entire world. Foreign policy experts point to slowly developing fissures born with the end of the cold war that emerged only in the debate leading up to the Iraq war.
"I think the turnaround was last summer when American policy moved ever more decisively toward war against Iraq," Joseph Joffe, co-editor of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, said. "That's what triggered the counter alliance of France and Germany and the enormous wave of hatred against the United States."
The subject of America in the world is, of course, complicated, and the nation's ebbing international image could rise quickly in response to events. The Bush administration's recent turn to the United Nations for help in postwar Iraq may, by stepping away from unilateralism, represents such an event. Even at this low point, millions of people still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in Iraq, and would, if given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves.
Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America's role, with the governments, and, to a lesser extent, the people, of the former Soviet Bloc countries much more favorably disposed to American power than the governments and people of American allies in Europe, most notably France and Germany.
In a strongly allied country like Japan, insecure in the face of a hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea a short missile distance away, there may be doubts about the wisdom of the American war on Iraq. But there seem to be far fewer doubts about the importance of American power generally to global stability.
In China, while many ordinary people express doubts about America's war in Iraq, anti-American feeling has diminished since Sept. 11, and there seems to be greater understanding and less instinctive criticism of the United States by government officials and intellectuals. The Chinese authorities have largely embraced America's "war on terror."
Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil supplies and on military domination.
The prevailing global mood has been expressed in different ways by many different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who booed the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who don't want to go to the United States as exchange students because America isn't "in."
But even among people who do not believe the various conspiracy theories that are being bandied about, it is not difficult to hear very strong denunciations of American policy and a deep questioning of American motives.
"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary critic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."
A Frenchman, Jean-Charles Pogram, 45, a computer technician, said this: "Everyone agrees on the principles of democracy and freedom, but the problem is that we don't agree with the means to achieve those ends.
"The United States can't see beyond the axiom that force can solve everything but Europe, because of two world wars, knows the price of blood," he said.
Lydia Adhiamba, a 20-year-old student at the Institute of Advanced Technology in Nairobi, said that the United States "wants to rule the whole world, and that's why there's so much animosity to the U.S."
This week, the major English language daily newspaper in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post, ran a prominent article entitled "Why moderate Muslims are annoyed with America," by Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo.
"If America wants to become a hegemonic power it is rather difficult for other nations to prevent that," he wrote. "However, if America wants to be a hegemonic power that has the respect and trust of other nations, it must be a benign one and not one that causes a reaction of hate or fear among other nations."
Crucial to global public opinion has been the failure of the Bush administration to persuade large segments of public opinion of its justification for going to war in Iraq.
In striking contrast to public opinion in the United States, where polls show a majority believing that there was a connection between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, the rest of the world does not believe that argument because, most people say, the evidence has not been produced.
This explains the enormous difference in international opinion between American military action in Afghanistan in the months after Sept. 11, which seemed to have tacit approval around the world as a legitimate act of self-defense, and the view of American military action in Iraq, which is commonly seen as the arbitrary act of an overbearing power.
Perhaps the strongest effect on public opinion has been in Arab and Muslim countries.
Even in relatively moderate Muslim countries like Indonesia and Turkey, or countries with large Muslim populations, like Nigeria, polls and interviews show sharp drops in public approval of the United States over the past year.
In unabashedly pro-American countries like Poland, perhaps the most important America ally on Iraq after Britain, polls show 60 percent of the public opposed to the Polish government's decision to send 2,500 troops in Iraq under overall American command.
For many people, the issue is not so much the United States as it is the Bush administration, and what is seen as its arrogance. In this view, a different set of policies and a different set of public statements from Washington would have resulted in a different set of attitudes toward the United States.
"The point I would make is that with the best will in the world, President Bush is a very poor salesman for the United States, and I say that as someone who has no animus against him or the United States," said Philip Gawaith, a financial communications consultant in London. "Whether it's Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, people have just felt that he's a silly man and therefore they are not obliged to think any harder about his position."
But while the public statements of the Bush administration have not played well in much of the world, many analysts see deeper causes for the rift that has opened between the United States and even many of its closest former allies.
In their view, the Iraq war has not so much caused a new divergence but highlighted and widened one that has existed at least since the end of the cold war. Put bluntly, Europe needs America less now that it feels less threatened.
Indeed, while the United States probably feels more threatened now than in 1989, when the cold war ended, Europe is broadly unconvinced of any imminent threat As a result, America and Europe tend to view the world differently.
"There were deep structural forces before 9/11 that were pushing us apart," said John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics."
He added: "In the absence of the Soviet threat or of an equivalent threat, there was no way that ties between U.S. and Europe wouldn't be loosened.
"So, when the Bush administration came to power, the question was whether it would make things better or worse, and I'd argue that it made them worse.
"In the war, you could argue that American unilateralism had no cost," Mearsheimer continued. "But, as we're finding out with regard to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, we need the Europeans and we need institutions like the UN. The fact is that the United States can't run the world by itself, and the problem is we've done a lot of damage in our relations with allies, and people are not terribly enthusiastic about helping us now."
Recent findings of international surveys have given a mathematical expression to these differences. A poll of 8,000 people in Europe and the United States conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di Sao Paolo of Italy, found Americans and Europeans agreeing on the nature of global threats, but disagreeing sharply on how they should be dealt with.
Most striking was a difference over the use of military force, with 84 percent of Americans and 48 percent of Europeans supporting force as a means of imposing international justice.
In Europe overall, the number of people who want the United States to maintain a strong global presence went down 19 percentage points since a similar poll last year, from 64 percent to 45 percent, while 50 percent of respondents in Germany, France and Italy express opposition to American international leadership.
Many of the difficulties predated Sept. 11, of course. Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, has listed some in a recent paper: "Economic disputes relating to steel and farm subsidies; limits on legal cooperation because of the death penalty in the United States; repeated charges of U.S. 'unilateralism' over actions in Afghanistan; and the U.S. decisions on the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and the Biological Weapons Protocol."
"One could conclude that there is today a serious question as to whether Europe and the United States are parting ways," Sandschneider writes.
From this point of view, as Sandschneider and others have said, the divergence between the United States and many other countries will not be a temporary phenomenon stemming from the Iraqi war, but a permanent aspect of the international scene.
A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed a growth of anti-American sentiment in many non-European parts of the world. It found, for example that only 15 percent of Indonesians now have a favorable impression of the United States, down from 60 percent a year ago.
Indonesia may be an especially troubling case to American policymakers who have hoped that Indonesia, a moderate country with a relatively easy-going attitude toward religion, would emerge as a kind of pro-American Islamic model.
But since Sept. 11, a group of extremists known as Jemaah Islamiyah has gained strength, hitting targets in Bali and Jakarta and making the country so insecure that Bush may not be able to stop off there during an Asia trip planned for next month.
One well-known mainstream Muslim leader, Din Syamsuddin, the American-educated vice president of a 30 million-strong Islamic organization, called the United States the "king of the terrorists" and referred to Bush as "drunken horse."
This turn for the worse has occurred despite a $10 million program by the State Department called the Shared Values Campaign in which speakers and short films showing Muslim life in the United States were sent last fall to Muslim countries, like Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Kuwait.
The New York Times
With sorrow, I must note that the Nation's best Newspaper has decided to remember the worst attack on our ideals and values EVER, with a load of America bashing:
Remembering, 2 years later
Richard Bernstein/NYT NYT
Thursday, September 11, 2003
U.S. is losing the sympathy of the world
BERLIN In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and support has given way in the months after the war in Iraq to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world public opinion in an unjustified and unilateral use of military force.
"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."
Across the globe, from Africa to Europe, South America to Southeast Asia, the war in Iraq has had a major impact on a public opinion that has moved generally from post-Sept. 11 sympathy to post-Iraq-war antipathy, or, at least to disappointment over what is seen as the sole remaining superpower's inclination to act pre-emptively with neither persuasive reasons nor United Nations approval.
To some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President George W. Bush, who is seen by many as, at best, an ineffective spokesman for American interests and, at worst, a gunslinging cowboy knocking over international treaties and bent on controlling the world's oil supplies, if not the entire world. Foreign policy experts point to slowly developing fissures born with the end of the cold war that emerged only in the debate leading up to the Iraq war.
"I think the turnaround was last summer when American policy moved ever more decisively toward war against Iraq," Joseph Joffe, co-editor of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, said. "That's what triggered the counter alliance of France and Germany and the enormous wave of hatred against the United States."
The subject of America in the world is, of course, complicated, and the nation's ebbing international image could rise quickly in response to events. The Bush administration's recent turn to the United Nations for help in postwar Iraq may, by stepping away from unilateralism, represents such an event. Even at this low point, millions of people still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in Iraq, and would, if given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves.
Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America's role, with the governments, and, to a lesser extent, the people, of the former Soviet Bloc countries much more favorably disposed to American power than the governments and people of American allies in Europe, most notably France and Germany.
In a strongly allied country like Japan, insecure in the face of a hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea a short missile distance away, there may be doubts about the wisdom of the American war on Iraq. But there seem to be far fewer doubts about the importance of American power generally to global stability.
In China, while many ordinary people express doubts about America's war in Iraq, anti-American feeling has diminished since Sept. 11, and there seems to be greater understanding and less instinctive criticism of the United States by government officials and intellectuals. The Chinese authorities have largely embraced America's "war on terror."
Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil supplies and on military domination.
The prevailing global mood has been expressed in different ways by many different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who booed the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who don't want to go to the United States as exchange students because America isn't "in."
But even among people who do not believe the various conspiracy theories that are being bandied about, it is not difficult to hear very strong denunciations of American policy and a deep questioning of American motives.
"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary critic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."
A Frenchman, Jean-Charles Pogram, 45, a computer technician, said this: "Everyone agrees on the principles of democracy and freedom, but the problem is that we don't agree with the means to achieve those ends.
"The United States can't see beyond the axiom that force can solve everything but Europe, because of two world wars, knows the price of blood," he said.
Lydia Adhiamba, a 20-year-old student at the Institute of Advanced Technology in Nairobi, said that the United States "wants to rule the whole world, and that's why there's so much animosity to the U.S."
This week, the major English language daily newspaper in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post, ran a prominent article entitled "Why moderate Muslims are annoyed with America," by Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo.
"If America wants to become a hegemonic power it is rather difficult for other nations to prevent that," he wrote. "However, if America wants to be a hegemonic power that has the respect and trust of other nations, it must be a benign one and not one that causes a reaction of hate or fear among other nations."
Crucial to global public opinion has been the failure of the Bush administration to persuade large segments of public opinion of its justification for going to war in Iraq.
In striking contrast to public opinion in the United States, where polls show a majority believing that there was a connection between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, the rest of the world does not believe that argument because, most people say, the evidence has not been produced.
This explains the enormous difference in international opinion between American military action in Afghanistan in the months after Sept. 11, which seemed to have tacit approval around the world as a legitimate act of self-defense, and the view of American military action in Iraq, which is commonly seen as the arbitrary act of an overbearing power.
Perhaps the strongest effect on public opinion has been in Arab and Muslim countries.
Even in relatively moderate Muslim countries like Indonesia and Turkey, or countries with large Muslim populations, like Nigeria, polls and interviews show sharp drops in public approval of the United States over the past year.
In unabashedly pro-American countries like Poland, perhaps the most important America ally on Iraq after Britain, polls show 60 percent of the public opposed to the Polish government's decision to send 2,500 troops in Iraq under overall American command.
For many people, the issue is not so much the United States as it is the Bush administration, and what is seen as its arrogance. In this view, a different set of policies and a different set of public statements from Washington would have resulted in a different set of attitudes toward the United States.
"The point I would make is that with the best will in the world, President Bush is a very poor salesman for the United States, and I say that as someone who has no animus against him or the United States," said Philip Gawaith, a financial communications consultant in London. "Whether it's Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, people have just felt that he's a silly man and therefore they are not obliged to think any harder about his position."
But while the public statements of the Bush administration have not played well in much of the world, many analysts see deeper causes for the rift that has opened between the United States and even many of its closest former allies.
In their view, the Iraq war has not so much caused a new divergence but highlighted and widened one that has existed at least since the end of the cold war. Put bluntly, Europe needs America less now that it feels less threatened.
Indeed, while the United States probably feels more threatened now than in 1989, when the cold war ended, Europe is broadly unconvinced of any imminent threat As a result, America and Europe tend to view the world differently.
"There were deep structural forces before 9/11 that were pushing us apart," said John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics."
He added: "In the absence of the Soviet threat or of an equivalent threat, there was no way that ties between U.S. and Europe wouldn't be loosened.
"So, when the Bush administration came to power, the question was whether it would make things better or worse, and I'd argue that it made them worse.
"In the war, you could argue that American unilateralism had no cost," Mearsheimer continued. "But, as we're finding out with regard to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, we need the Europeans and we need institutions like the UN. The fact is that the United States can't run the world by itself, and the problem is we've done a lot of damage in our relations with allies, and people are not terribly enthusiastic about helping us now."
Recent findings of international surveys have given a mathematical expression to these differences. A poll of 8,000 people in Europe and the United States conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di Sao Paolo of Italy, found Americans and Europeans agreeing on the nature of global threats, but disagreeing sharply on how they should be dealt with.
Most striking was a difference over the use of military force, with 84 percent of Americans and 48 percent of Europeans supporting force as a means of imposing international justice.
In Europe overall, the number of people who want the United States to maintain a strong global presence went down 19 percentage points since a similar poll last year, from 64 percent to 45 percent, while 50 percent of respondents in Germany, France and Italy express opposition to American international leadership.
Many of the difficulties predated Sept. 11, of course. Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, has listed some in a recent paper: "Economic disputes relating to steel and farm subsidies; limits on legal cooperation because of the death penalty in the United States; repeated charges of U.S. 'unilateralism' over actions in Afghanistan; and the U.S. decisions on the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and the Biological Weapons Protocol."
"One could conclude that there is today a serious question as to whether Europe and the United States are parting ways," Sandschneider writes.
From this point of view, as Sandschneider and others have said, the divergence between the United States and many other countries will not be a temporary phenomenon stemming from the Iraqi war, but a permanent aspect of the international scene.
A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed a growth of anti-American sentiment in many non-European parts of the world. It found, for example that only 15 percent of Indonesians now have a favorable impression of the United States, down from 60 percent a year ago.
Indonesia may be an especially troubling case to American policymakers who have hoped that Indonesia, a moderate country with a relatively easy-going attitude toward religion, would emerge as a kind of pro-American Islamic model.
But since Sept. 11, a group of extremists known as Jemaah Islamiyah has gained strength, hitting targets in Bali and Jakarta and making the country so insecure that Bush may not be able to stop off there during an Asia trip planned for next month.
One well-known mainstream Muslim leader, Din Syamsuddin, the American-educated vice president of a 30 million-strong Islamic organization, called the United States the "king of the terrorists" and referred to Bush as "drunken horse."
This turn for the worse has occurred despite a $10 million program by the State Department called the Shared Values Campaign in which speakers and short films showing Muslim life in the United States were sent last fall to Muslim countries, like Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Kuwait.
The New York Times
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
What Iraqis Really Think
We asked them. What they told us is largely reassuring.
BY KARL ZINSMEISTER
Wednesday, September 10, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
America, some say, is hobbled in its policies toward Iraq by not knowing much about what Iraqis really think. Are they on the side of radical Islamists? What kind of government would they like? What is their attitude toward the U.S.? Do the Shiites hate us? Could Iraq become another Iran under the ayatollahs? Are the people in the Sunni triangle the real problem? Up to now we've only been able to guess. We've relied on anecdotal temperature-takings of the Iraqi public, and have been at the mercy of images presented to us by the press. We all know that journalists have a bad-news bias: 10,000 schools being rehabbed isn't news; one school blowing up is a weeklong feeding frenzy. And some of us who have spent time recently in Iraq--I was an embedded reporter during the war--have been puzzled by the postwar news and media imagery, which is much more negative than what many individuals involved in reconstructing Iraq have been telling us. Well, finally we have some evidence of where the truth may lie. Working with Zogby International survey researchers, The American Enterprise magazine has conducted the first scientific poll of the Iraqi public. Given the state of the country, this was not easy. Security problems delayed our intrepid fieldworkers several times. We labored at careful translations, regional samplings and survey methods to make sure our results would accurately reflect the views of Iraq's multifarious, long-suffering people. We consulted Eastern European pollsters about the best way to elicit honest answers from those conditioned to repress their true sentiments.
Conducted in August, our survey was necessarily limited in scope, but it reflects a nationally representative sample of Iraqi views, as captured in four disparate cities: Basra (Iraq's second largest, home to 1.7 million people, in the far south), Mosul (third largest, far north), Kirkuk (Kurdish-influenced oil city, fourth largest) and Ramadi (a resistance hotbed in the Sunni triangle). The results show that the Iraqi public is more sensible, stable and moderate than commonly portrayed, and that Iraq is not so fanatical, or resentful of the U.S., after all. • Iraqis are optimistic. Seven out of 10 say they expect their country and their personal lives will be better five years from now. On both fronts, 32% say things will become much better. • The toughest part of reconstructing their nation, Iraqis say by 3 to 1, will be politics, not economics. They are nervous about democracy. Asked which is closer to their own view--"Democracy can work well in Iraq," or "Democracy is a Western way of doing things"--five out of 10 said democracy is Western and won't work in Iraq. One in 10 wasn't sure. And four out of 10 said democracy can work in Iraq. There were interesting divergences. Sunnis were negative on democracy by more than 2 to 1; but, critically, the majority Shiites were as likely to say democracy would work for Iraqis as not. People age 18-29 are much more rosy about democracy than other Iraqis, and women are significantly more positive than men. • Asked to name one country they would most like Iraq to model its new government on from five possibilities--neighboring, Baathist Syria; neighbor and Islamic monarchy Saudi Arabia; neighbor and Islamist republic Iran; Arab lodestar Egypt; or the U.S.--the most popular model by far was the U.S. The U.S. was preferred as a model by 37% of Iraqis selecting from those five--more than Syria, Iran and Egypt put together. Saudi Arabia was in second place at 28%. Again, there were important demographic splits. Younger adults are especially favorable toward the U.S., and Shiites are more admiring than Sunnis. Interestingly, Iraqi Shiites, coreligionists with Iranians, do not admire Iran's Islamist government; the U.S. is six times as popular with them as a model for governance. • Our interviewers inquired whether Iraq should have an Islamic government, or instead let all people practice their own religion. Only 33% want an Islamic government; a solid 60% say no. A vital detail: Shiites (whom Western reporters frequently portray as self-flagellating maniacs) are least receptive to the idea of an Islamic government, saying no by 66% to 27%. It is only among the minority Sunnis that there is interest in a religious state, and they are split evenly on the question. • Perhaps the strongest indication that an Islamic government won't be part of Iraq's future: The nation is thoroughly secularized. We asked how often our respondents had attended the Friday prayer over the previous month. Fully 43% said "never." It's time to scratch "Khomeini II" from the list of morbid fears. • You can also cross out "Osama II": 57% of Iraqis with an opinion have an unfavorable view of Osama bin Laden, with 41% of those saying it is a very unfavorable view. (Women are especially down on him.) Except in the Sunni triangle (where the limited support that exists for bin Laden is heavily concentrated), negative views of the al Qaeda supremo are actually quite lopsided in all parts of the country. And those opinions were collected before Iraqi police announced it was al Qaeda members who killed worshipers with a truck bomb in Najaf. • And you can write off the possibility of a Baath revival. We asked "Should Baath Party leaders who committed crimes in the past be punished, or should past actions be put behind us?" A thoroughly unforgiving Iraqi public stated by 74% to 18% that Saddam's henchmen should be punished. This new evidence on Iraqi opinion suggests the country is manageable. If the small number of militants conducting sabotage and murder inside the country can gradually be eliminated by American troops (this is already happening), then the mass of citizens living along the Tigris-Euphrates Valley are likely to make reasonably sensible use of their new freedom. "We will not forget it was the U.S. soldiers who liberated us from Saddam," said Abid Ali, an auto repair shop owner in Sadr City last month--and our research shows that he's not unrepresentative.
None of this is to suggest that the task ahead will be simple. Inchoate anxiety toward the U.S. showed up when we asked Iraqis if they thought the U.S. would help or hurt Iraq over a five-year period. By 50% to 36% they chose hurt over help. This is fairly understandable; Iraqis have just lived through a war in which Americans were (necessarily) flinging most of the ammunition. These experiences may explain why women (who are more antimilitary in all cultures) show up in our data as especially wary of the U.S. right now. War is never pleasant, though U.S. forces made heroic efforts to spare innocents in this one, as I illustrate with firsthand examples in my book about the battles. Evidence of the comparative gentleness of this war can be seen in our poll. Less than 30% of our sample of Iraqis knew or heard of anyone killed in the spring fighting. Meanwhile, fully half knew some family member, neighbor or friend who had been killed by Iraqi security forces during the years Saddam held power. Perhaps the ultimate indication of how comfortable Iraqis are with America's aims in their region came when we asked how long they would like to see American and British forces remain in their country: Six months? One year? Two years or more? Two thirds of those with an opinion urged that the coalition troops should stick around for at least another year. We're making headway in a benighted part of the world. Hang in there, America. Mr. Zinsmeister, editor in chief of The American Enterprise magazine and holder of the J.B. Fuqua chair at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Boots on the Ground: A Month With the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq," just out from St. Martin's Press
We asked them. What they told us is largely reassuring.
BY KARL ZINSMEISTER
Wednesday, September 10, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
America, some say, is hobbled in its policies toward Iraq by not knowing much about what Iraqis really think. Are they on the side of radical Islamists? What kind of government would they like? What is their attitude toward the U.S.? Do the Shiites hate us? Could Iraq become another Iran under the ayatollahs? Are the people in the Sunni triangle the real problem? Up to now we've only been able to guess. We've relied on anecdotal temperature-takings of the Iraqi public, and have been at the mercy of images presented to us by the press. We all know that journalists have a bad-news bias: 10,000 schools being rehabbed isn't news; one school blowing up is a weeklong feeding frenzy. And some of us who have spent time recently in Iraq--I was an embedded reporter during the war--have been puzzled by the postwar news and media imagery, which is much more negative than what many individuals involved in reconstructing Iraq have been telling us. Well, finally we have some evidence of where the truth may lie. Working with Zogby International survey researchers, The American Enterprise magazine has conducted the first scientific poll of the Iraqi public. Given the state of the country, this was not easy. Security problems delayed our intrepid fieldworkers several times. We labored at careful translations, regional samplings and survey methods to make sure our results would accurately reflect the views of Iraq's multifarious, long-suffering people. We consulted Eastern European pollsters about the best way to elicit honest answers from those conditioned to repress their true sentiments.
Conducted in August, our survey was necessarily limited in scope, but it reflects a nationally representative sample of Iraqi views, as captured in four disparate cities: Basra (Iraq's second largest, home to 1.7 million people, in the far south), Mosul (third largest, far north), Kirkuk (Kurdish-influenced oil city, fourth largest) and Ramadi (a resistance hotbed in the Sunni triangle). The results show that the Iraqi public is more sensible, stable and moderate than commonly portrayed, and that Iraq is not so fanatical, or resentful of the U.S., after all. • Iraqis are optimistic. Seven out of 10 say they expect their country and their personal lives will be better five years from now. On both fronts, 32% say things will become much better. • The toughest part of reconstructing their nation, Iraqis say by 3 to 1, will be politics, not economics. They are nervous about democracy. Asked which is closer to their own view--"Democracy can work well in Iraq," or "Democracy is a Western way of doing things"--five out of 10 said democracy is Western and won't work in Iraq. One in 10 wasn't sure. And four out of 10 said democracy can work in Iraq. There were interesting divergences. Sunnis were negative on democracy by more than 2 to 1; but, critically, the majority Shiites were as likely to say democracy would work for Iraqis as not. People age 18-29 are much more rosy about democracy than other Iraqis, and women are significantly more positive than men. • Asked to name one country they would most like Iraq to model its new government on from five possibilities--neighboring, Baathist Syria; neighbor and Islamic monarchy Saudi Arabia; neighbor and Islamist republic Iran; Arab lodestar Egypt; or the U.S.--the most popular model by far was the U.S. The U.S. was preferred as a model by 37% of Iraqis selecting from those five--more than Syria, Iran and Egypt put together. Saudi Arabia was in second place at 28%. Again, there were important demographic splits. Younger adults are especially favorable toward the U.S., and Shiites are more admiring than Sunnis. Interestingly, Iraqi Shiites, coreligionists with Iranians, do not admire Iran's Islamist government; the U.S. is six times as popular with them as a model for governance. • Our interviewers inquired whether Iraq should have an Islamic government, or instead let all people practice their own religion. Only 33% want an Islamic government; a solid 60% say no. A vital detail: Shiites (whom Western reporters frequently portray as self-flagellating maniacs) are least receptive to the idea of an Islamic government, saying no by 66% to 27%. It is only among the minority Sunnis that there is interest in a religious state, and they are split evenly on the question. • Perhaps the strongest indication that an Islamic government won't be part of Iraq's future: The nation is thoroughly secularized. We asked how often our respondents had attended the Friday prayer over the previous month. Fully 43% said "never." It's time to scratch "Khomeini II" from the list of morbid fears. • You can also cross out "Osama II": 57% of Iraqis with an opinion have an unfavorable view of Osama bin Laden, with 41% of those saying it is a very unfavorable view. (Women are especially down on him.) Except in the Sunni triangle (where the limited support that exists for bin Laden is heavily concentrated), negative views of the al Qaeda supremo are actually quite lopsided in all parts of the country. And those opinions were collected before Iraqi police announced it was al Qaeda members who killed worshipers with a truck bomb in Najaf. • And you can write off the possibility of a Baath revival. We asked "Should Baath Party leaders who committed crimes in the past be punished, or should past actions be put behind us?" A thoroughly unforgiving Iraqi public stated by 74% to 18% that Saddam's henchmen should be punished. This new evidence on Iraqi opinion suggests the country is manageable. If the small number of militants conducting sabotage and murder inside the country can gradually be eliminated by American troops (this is already happening), then the mass of citizens living along the Tigris-Euphrates Valley are likely to make reasonably sensible use of their new freedom. "We will not forget it was the U.S. soldiers who liberated us from Saddam," said Abid Ali, an auto repair shop owner in Sadr City last month--and our research shows that he's not unrepresentative.
None of this is to suggest that the task ahead will be simple. Inchoate anxiety toward the U.S. showed up when we asked Iraqis if they thought the U.S. would help or hurt Iraq over a five-year period. By 50% to 36% they chose hurt over help. This is fairly understandable; Iraqis have just lived through a war in which Americans were (necessarily) flinging most of the ammunition. These experiences may explain why women (who are more antimilitary in all cultures) show up in our data as especially wary of the U.S. right now. War is never pleasant, though U.S. forces made heroic efforts to spare innocents in this one, as I illustrate with firsthand examples in my book about the battles. Evidence of the comparative gentleness of this war can be seen in our poll. Less than 30% of our sample of Iraqis knew or heard of anyone killed in the spring fighting. Meanwhile, fully half knew some family member, neighbor or friend who had been killed by Iraqi security forces during the years Saddam held power. Perhaps the ultimate indication of how comfortable Iraqis are with America's aims in their region came when we asked how long they would like to see American and British forces remain in their country: Six months? One year? Two years or more? Two thirds of those with an opinion urged that the coalition troops should stick around for at least another year. We're making headway in a benighted part of the world. Hang in there, America. Mr. Zinsmeister, editor in chief of The American Enterprise magazine and holder of the J.B. Fuqua chair at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Boots on the Ground: A Month With the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq," just out from St. Martin's Press
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
Slate's review of tKagan & Kristoll's editorial on the Weekly Standard:
The Neocon Crackup
The Weekly Standard finally recognizes our manpower shortage in Iraq.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, September 8, 2003, at 3:59 PM PT
The smoothly oiled neoconservative message machine is showing signs of breakdown. Having argued for five months that things were basically fine in Iraq—and that any suggestion otherwise was liberal cant—the Weekly Standard last week broke with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about whether additional troops were needed to restore order in Iraq. Rumsfeld says no; the Standard said yes in a lead editorial by publisher William Kristol and contributing editor Robert Kagan. In the Sept. 15 issue, Kristol and Kagan say yes again—a little more emphatically this time:
[W]hen Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says the United States has enough forces on the ground in Iraq, what he means is that we have enough so long as nothing untoward happens. But even that may be inaccurate.
In a second piece, titled "Secretary of Stubbornness" and penned by Tom Donnelly, Rumsfeld takes a more direct hit. The Pentagon chief, Donnelly writes, risks going down in history "as the architect of defeat in the larger war for Iraq." Kristol was even blunter about Rumsfeld to Dana Milbank and Thomas E. Ricks in the Sept. 4 Washington Post:
For five months they let Rumsfeld have his way, and for five months Rumsfeld said everything's fine. He wanted to do the postwar with fewer troops than a lot of people advised, and it turned out to be a mistake.
But this new party line appeared too late for Midge Decter, mother of Standard contributing editor John Podhoretz, to call back from the printer an admiring portrait of Rumsfeld due to be published Oct. 14 by HarperCollins (which, like the Standard, is a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.). Chatterbox hasn't yet read the Decter book, but the publisher's promotional copy says Decter "has enjoyed over two decades of personal friendship with Rumsfeld," and that Rumsfeld is "the biggest star (apart from the president himself) of the Bush administration." And then there's the book's title: Rummy, Rummy, Rummy, I've Got Love in My Tummy. OK, that isn't the book's title. It's Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait. But that doesn't sound like a book about any "architect of defeat in the larger war for Iraq."
Also caught out arguing the old neoconservative party line is Max Boot, recently returned from Iraq, who assures us in the Sept. 7 Los Angeles Times that "U.S. troops in Iraq are slowly winning the war on the ground, even as they're losing the public relations battle back home." At one point, Boot reports, "[a] corporal asked me to cover [a handcuffed Iraqi suspected of bombing a Marine transport] with a 9-millimeter pistol. I was happy to comply." No offense to Boot, but if a Marine corporal needs to recruit a neocon scribbler to be prison guard, that suggests to Chatterbox that U.S. troops in Iraq are in need of reinforcements. But our man in Baghdad will have none of it: "Every U.S. officer I talked to said that the 150,000 soldiers we have in Iraq now are sufficient."
In time, Chatterbox presumes, Decter and Boot will catch up with the new Standard line, which acknowledges a manpower shortage that, inside the Pentagon, only Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and their yes-men refuse to see. (By asking Congress to double the amount spent on the Iraq occupation, President Bush seems to be acknowledging reality, too.) But Chatterbox can well understand why the neocons resisted for so long. If we're short on the number of troops needed to get the job in Iraq done, we need to ask where the added troops will come from. That's the central question addressed by Kristol and Kagan's latest editorial. Their answer comes in three parts.
Part one is the assertion that the United Nations will never provide sufficient troops to address the crisis:
[T]he bad news for the U.S. military, and for all those out there who would like to see us shift some of the burden of the Iraqi occupation to the U.N. over the next few months, is that we aren't likely to get more troops from the international community.
Part two is the rejection of Rumsfeld's idea that we should accelerate turning Iraqi security over to the Iraqis (a strategy also favored by neocon Richard Perle):
In the interest of finding capable Iraqis, the administration has apparently been turning increasingly to former employees of Saddam Hussein's elite military and security forces. According to the Washington Post's Daniel Williams, "The need to quickly find skilled fighters and intelligence agents … has forced the Americans to dip into the ranks of units closely associated with Hussein." … [I]t only takes one or two mistakes in the vetting process to cause a catastrophe.
Part three is the unilateral solution: Fill the gap with U.S. troops. The White House, Kristol and Kagan write, must
make the hard decision to put in the U.S. troops necessary to do the job. Though it is true that our military is smaller than it should be, there are troops available for Iraq, if we are willing to call on combat elements from the Marines, the National Guard, and Special Forces.
Let's take these one at a time.
Part 1 is an extrapolation based on the current difficulty the United States is having in getting other nations to contribute. But Kristol and Kagan fail to mention the principal stumbling block in these negotiations. The other nations want the United Nations, and not the United States, to control peacekeeping in Iraq. Kristol and Kagan (and President Bush) do not. They are therefore unwilling to recognize any practical benefit that might arise if the Bush administration were to yield more fully on this point.
Secondarily, it should be pointed out that military forces aren't the only thing of value that other nations have to offer. They can offer police. The United States does not have a national police force, whereas many other countries do. Police forces from other nations could relieve our troops from routine guarding duties, freeing them up to hunt down Baathist remnants, Islamist agitators, and others currently waging guerrilla warfare against us.
Part 2 is quite obviously true. The need to meet immediate security needs will only be undermined if the process of screening Iraqi security forces is accelerated. Yes, let's start building an Iraqi security force. But having gone to the trouble of overthrowing Saddam's regime, we should take care it doesn't reconstitute itself under our own supervision.
Part 3 is, you may have noticed, extremely vague. Quite a lot has been written lately about the overstretched military. In the Aug. 24 Time, Mark Thompson and Michael Duffy, two experienced defense reporters, point out that we now have "140,000 U.S. troops tied down stabilizing Iraq, 34,000 in Kuwait, 10,000 in Afghanistan and 5,000 in the Balkans. … Even without new missions, the armed services are straining to handle the ones they have."
These commitments have been undertaken at a time when the military employs 1.4 million people (down from 3.5 million in 1968). The Army, which is the service most frequently used for peacekeeping missions, employs 480,000 (down from 1.6 million in 1968). About 165,000 of these people are currently in Iraq and Kuwait. But according to a new RAND study, the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq as successfully as Kosovo has been stabilized is roughly 500,000. In other words, the ideal number of troops to keep the peace in Iraq exceeds the size of the entire U.S. Army.
A recent Congressional Budget Office study concluded that the Army will be unable to sustain the present size of its occupation force in Iraq and still maintain its current policy of not keeping troops deployed in Iraq for more than a year. (Kristol and Kagan, with not one day of military service between them, have the nerve to denounce the burnout concern as "a kind of veiled McGovernism.") The shortfall will exist even if the Marine Corps, Army special forces units, and National Guard units pitch in.
Is Chatterbox saying that sustaining or increasing the United States military presence in Iraq is impossible? He is not. Troop commitments elsewhere can be reduced; soldiers with desk jobs can be deployed to the field. But doing this will be at least as difficult as—and probably more difficult than—recruiting large numbers of troops from abroad.
Let's assume the RAND estimate is twice as large as it needs to be. That is, let's assume Iraq really needs somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 troops to keep the peace. Even then, the only logical way even to approach filling this need is to pull in troops wherever we can find them—from the U.S. military, from foreign militaries, and from Iraq. (Chatterbox's only specific reservation concerns Turkish troops, who could create serious mischief in Kurdistan.) This is the reality that even the Standard, in its new let's-face-reality mode, refuses to consider.
Timothy Noah writes "Chatterbox" for Slate.
The Neocon Crackup
The Weekly Standard finally recognizes our manpower shortage in Iraq.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, September 8, 2003, at 3:59 PM PT
The smoothly oiled neoconservative message machine is showing signs of breakdown. Having argued for five months that things were basically fine in Iraq—and that any suggestion otherwise was liberal cant—the Weekly Standard last week broke with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about whether additional troops were needed to restore order in Iraq. Rumsfeld says no; the Standard said yes in a lead editorial by publisher William Kristol and contributing editor Robert Kagan. In the Sept. 15 issue, Kristol and Kagan say yes again—a little more emphatically this time:
[W]hen Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says the United States has enough forces on the ground in Iraq, what he means is that we have enough so long as nothing untoward happens. But even that may be inaccurate.
In a second piece, titled "Secretary of Stubbornness" and penned by Tom Donnelly, Rumsfeld takes a more direct hit. The Pentagon chief, Donnelly writes, risks going down in history "as the architect of defeat in the larger war for Iraq." Kristol was even blunter about Rumsfeld to Dana Milbank and Thomas E. Ricks in the Sept. 4 Washington Post:
For five months they let Rumsfeld have his way, and for five months Rumsfeld said everything's fine. He wanted to do the postwar with fewer troops than a lot of people advised, and it turned out to be a mistake.
But this new party line appeared too late for Midge Decter, mother of Standard contributing editor John Podhoretz, to call back from the printer an admiring portrait of Rumsfeld due to be published Oct. 14 by HarperCollins (which, like the Standard, is a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.). Chatterbox hasn't yet read the Decter book, but the publisher's promotional copy says Decter "has enjoyed over two decades of personal friendship with Rumsfeld," and that Rumsfeld is "the biggest star (apart from the president himself) of the Bush administration." And then there's the book's title: Rummy, Rummy, Rummy, I've Got Love in My Tummy. OK, that isn't the book's title. It's Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait. But that doesn't sound like a book about any "architect of defeat in the larger war for Iraq."
Also caught out arguing the old neoconservative party line is Max Boot, recently returned from Iraq, who assures us in the Sept. 7 Los Angeles Times that "U.S. troops in Iraq are slowly winning the war on the ground, even as they're losing the public relations battle back home." At one point, Boot reports, "[a] corporal asked me to cover [a handcuffed Iraqi suspected of bombing a Marine transport] with a 9-millimeter pistol. I was happy to comply." No offense to Boot, but if a Marine corporal needs to recruit a neocon scribbler to be prison guard, that suggests to Chatterbox that U.S. troops in Iraq are in need of reinforcements. But our man in Baghdad will have none of it: "Every U.S. officer I talked to said that the 150,000 soldiers we have in Iraq now are sufficient."
In time, Chatterbox presumes, Decter and Boot will catch up with the new Standard line, which acknowledges a manpower shortage that, inside the Pentagon, only Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and their yes-men refuse to see. (By asking Congress to double the amount spent on the Iraq occupation, President Bush seems to be acknowledging reality, too.) But Chatterbox can well understand why the neocons resisted for so long. If we're short on the number of troops needed to get the job in Iraq done, we need to ask where the added troops will come from. That's the central question addressed by Kristol and Kagan's latest editorial. Their answer comes in three parts.
Part one is the assertion that the United Nations will never provide sufficient troops to address the crisis:
[T]he bad news for the U.S. military, and for all those out there who would like to see us shift some of the burden of the Iraqi occupation to the U.N. over the next few months, is that we aren't likely to get more troops from the international community.
Part two is the rejection of Rumsfeld's idea that we should accelerate turning Iraqi security over to the Iraqis (a strategy also favored by neocon Richard Perle):
In the interest of finding capable Iraqis, the administration has apparently been turning increasingly to former employees of Saddam Hussein's elite military and security forces. According to the Washington Post's Daniel Williams, "The need to quickly find skilled fighters and intelligence agents … has forced the Americans to dip into the ranks of units closely associated with Hussein." … [I]t only takes one or two mistakes in the vetting process to cause a catastrophe.
Part three is the unilateral solution: Fill the gap with U.S. troops. The White House, Kristol and Kagan write, must
make the hard decision to put in the U.S. troops necessary to do the job. Though it is true that our military is smaller than it should be, there are troops available for Iraq, if we are willing to call on combat elements from the Marines, the National Guard, and Special Forces.
Let's take these one at a time.
Part 1 is an extrapolation based on the current difficulty the United States is having in getting other nations to contribute. But Kristol and Kagan fail to mention the principal stumbling block in these negotiations. The other nations want the United Nations, and not the United States, to control peacekeeping in Iraq. Kristol and Kagan (and President Bush) do not. They are therefore unwilling to recognize any practical benefit that might arise if the Bush administration were to yield more fully on this point.
Secondarily, it should be pointed out that military forces aren't the only thing of value that other nations have to offer. They can offer police. The United States does not have a national police force, whereas many other countries do. Police forces from other nations could relieve our troops from routine guarding duties, freeing them up to hunt down Baathist remnants, Islamist agitators, and others currently waging guerrilla warfare against us.
Part 2 is quite obviously true. The need to meet immediate security needs will only be undermined if the process of screening Iraqi security forces is accelerated. Yes, let's start building an Iraqi security force. But having gone to the trouble of overthrowing Saddam's regime, we should take care it doesn't reconstitute itself under our own supervision.
Part 3 is, you may have noticed, extremely vague. Quite a lot has been written lately about the overstretched military. In the Aug. 24 Time, Mark Thompson and Michael Duffy, two experienced defense reporters, point out that we now have "140,000 U.S. troops tied down stabilizing Iraq, 34,000 in Kuwait, 10,000 in Afghanistan and 5,000 in the Balkans. … Even without new missions, the armed services are straining to handle the ones they have."
These commitments have been undertaken at a time when the military employs 1.4 million people (down from 3.5 million in 1968). The Army, which is the service most frequently used for peacekeeping missions, employs 480,000 (down from 1.6 million in 1968). About 165,000 of these people are currently in Iraq and Kuwait. But according to a new RAND study, the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq as successfully as Kosovo has been stabilized is roughly 500,000. In other words, the ideal number of troops to keep the peace in Iraq exceeds the size of the entire U.S. Army.
A recent Congressional Budget Office study concluded that the Army will be unable to sustain the present size of its occupation force in Iraq and still maintain its current policy of not keeping troops deployed in Iraq for more than a year. (Kristol and Kagan, with not one day of military service between them, have the nerve to denounce the burnout concern as "a kind of veiled McGovernism.") The shortfall will exist even if the Marine Corps, Army special forces units, and National Guard units pitch in.
Is Chatterbox saying that sustaining or increasing the United States military presence in Iraq is impossible? He is not. Troop commitments elsewhere can be reduced; soldiers with desk jobs can be deployed to the field. But doing this will be at least as difficult as—and probably more difficult than—recruiting large numbers of troops from abroad.
Let's assume the RAND estimate is twice as large as it needs to be. That is, let's assume Iraq really needs somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 troops to keep the peace. Even then, the only logical way even to approach filling this need is to pull in troops wherever we can find them—from the U.S. military, from foreign militaries, and from Iraq. (Chatterbox's only specific reservation concerns Turkish troops, who could create serious mischief in Kurdistan.) This is the reality that even the Standard, in its new let's-face-reality mode, refuses to consider.
Timothy Noah writes "Chatterbox" for Slate.
From the Weekly Standard: Kagan and Kristoll
America's Responsibility From the September 15, 2003 issue: Should the administration place all its bets on being able to find tens of thousands of foreign forces to fill the dangerous gap in Iraq?
by William Kristol and Robert Kagan
09/15/2003, Volume 009, Issue 01
DESPERATION BREEDS ILLUSIONS. The latest illusion, embraced reluctantly by the Bush administration and enthusiastically by its critics, is that the burden of establishing and maintaining security in Iraq can be substantially shifted off American shoulders and onto someone else's--whether it be the United Nations, Turkey, India, or the poor Iraqi people themselves. In principle, there is nothing wrong with trying to shift control back to the Iraqis. That should be our goal. Nor would any reasonable person deny that international assistance is essential to rebuilding Iraq. But what we are witnessing today is neither prudent multilateralism nor the normal, gradual process of turning power over to Iraqis that we all expected to occur over time. On both the international and Iraqi fronts, the administration's actions are being driven by the realization that there are too few American troops in Iraq.
At least the administration has begun dropping the pretense that everything is under control in Iraq and that the civilian authority has the resources and the field commanders the troops that they need. Last week the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, admitted that his forces could not handle any new eruption of conflict in Iraq should one occur. "If a militia or an internal conflict of some nature were to erupt," Gen. Sanchez told reporters in Baghdad, ". . . that would be a challenge out there that I do not have sufficient forces for." So when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says the United States has enough forces on the ground in Iraq, what he means is that we have enough so long as nothing untoward happens. But even that may be inaccurate. General Sanchez went on to acknowledge, as the Associated Press reported, that "the coalition lacks sufficient troops to protect Iraq's porous borders or its thousands of miles of highways." This is a special problem inasmuch as the main "security challenges" Sanchez sees "looming in the future" include the infiltration of al Qaeda and other foreign forces across those porous borders and along those highways.
It's not surprising, therefore, that the American officials most eager for a U.N. resolution these days are to be found not just in the State Department but also among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders of U.S. forces in Iraq. Secretary of State Powell's aides spun the press about their boss's big victory over Rumsfeld, thus perpetuating the petty personal feuds that plague this administration even during times of crisis. But in fact the administration's new push for U.N. backing is not a victory for the multilateralist spirit Powell allegedly harbors. It is a simple matter of an unwillingness by America's leaders to shoulder the necessary military burden.
But the bad news for the U.S. military, and for all those out there who would like to see us shift some of the burden of the Iraqi occupation to the U.N. over the next few months, is that we aren't likely to get more troops from the international community. It's a good bet France will strike a hard bargain before agreeing to any resolution acceptable to the administration--if it ever does. But even if a new resolution passes, don't expect a big influx of foreign forces. The Europeans have few, if any, troops to spare. India and Turkey, who are the real targets of the administration's diplomatic efforts, show every sign of not wanting to play. The Turkish government will apparently not even put the issue to a vote before October, and Turkish public opinion remains hostile to any deployment in Iraq. Nor should one have high hopes for India, where public opinion is also hostile and the government wary. After all, what country would want to rush troops into Iraq now when even the Americans have been unable to create a secure environment?
Never mind whether it is desirable to replace American troops with forces from Poland and Thailand and Mongolia in such sensitive places as Najaf. After the August 29 car bombing that killed the prominent Shia cleric Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, the U.S. Marines decided to extend their stay in Najaf another two weeks. Two weeks? Will things be back to normal in Najaf in two weeks? Then there are other problems. As Reuel Marc Gerecht points out elsewhere in this issue, there is a real question whether non-American forces, and particularly Muslim forces from Turkey and Pakistan, will make the situation in Iraq better or worse. This week the newly appointed Iraqi foreign minister said he was not happy about the idea of Turkish troops in Iraq. There's symmetry to that, because the Turks aren't happy about the idea either.
In short, it is foolish--and we believe irresponsible--for the administration to place all its bets on being able to find tens of thousands of foreign forces to fill the dangerous gap in Iraq in the coming months. We have nothing in principle against seeking a new U.N. resolution, or in further "internationalizing" the occupation of Iraq, if that will help bring security to the country. But the fact is that, at the end of two months of U.N. diplomacy, the United States is unlikely to have found real help. And then what will the administration do?
The same desperation is driving the administration to accelerate its efforts to turn over responsibility for maintaining security in Iraq to Iraqis. Obviously this ought to be the goal, and the sooner the better. But there are real questions about how quickly a reliable Iraqi force can be put in place. The original plan was to take more than a year to stand up an Iraqi army, and more than a year to train an Iraqi police force to reasonable standards. Now that's all being accelerated. Why? Not because the administration is suddenly eager to put an Iraqi face on security. Not because it's been determined that Iraqis don't need that much training after all. No, the accelerated timetable is due entirely to the fact that security problems are proliferating, and the U.S. forces in place are insufficient to deal with the mounting crisis. But premature overreliance on Iraqi forces is a bad substitute for adequate U.S. forces. General Sanchez admits that a serious Iraqi force won't be ready for several months. That's probably optimistic.
And there's another problem. In the interest of finding capable Iraqis, the administration has apparently been turning increasingly to former employees of Saddam Hussein's elite military and security forces. According to the Washington Post's Daniel Williams, "The need to quickly find skilled fighters and intelligence agents . . . has forced the Americans to dip into the ranks of units closely associated with Hussein." Most worrying if true is the fact that the new Interior Ministry's domestic intelligence network will, according to the Post, be "made up largely of secret police and intelligence agents from the ousted government." Administration officials say all recruits are "screened" to insure their loyalty to the new regime and their friendliness toward the United States. But as one Iraqi official commented, "Their ties may be difficult to break." And it only takes one or two mistakes in the vetting process to cause a catastrophe. Already American officials in Baghdad are investigating the possibility that the car bombing of police headquarters there may have involved Baathists within the new Iraqi security forces. Similar suspicions swirl around the bombing of the U.N. headquarters.
Plainly, there are no easy answers to the problems we face in Iraq right now. The American military is too small, thanks to a decade-and-a-half's irresponsible cutbacks, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. The administration seems to find it difficult to admit that more troops are needed, in Iraq and in the armed forces generally. But every day, the reality of our predicament becomes harder to paper over. The difficult straits in which we find ourselves will become painfully apparent when the administration's pleas for help at the U.N. prove unavailing. We trust that before that moment arrives, the White House will make the hard decision to put in the U.S. troops necessary to do the job. Though it is true that our military is smaller than it should be, there are troops available for Iraq, if we are willing to call on combat elements from the Marines, the National Guard, and Special Forces.
Again, we have no principled objection to involving the United Nations, to seeking more international help, and to giving Iraqis more responsibility for their own country. But in present circumstances, the hasty efforts in this direction have about them an unmistakable air of buck-passing. Here we find the Bush administration and its Democratic critics in altogether too much agreement: It's been four months since the war ended, and already everyone wants to shift the burden of responsibility off America's shoulders and onto someone else's, and the sooner the better. Democrats call for internationalization in Iraq not simply because they like multilateralism but because, as both Howard Dean and John Kerry have said, it will allow us to "bring our boys home." In this formulation, the call for the U.N. to take the lead role in Iraq is really a kind of veiled McGovernism. The administration's push to stand up an Iraqi force ahead of schedule is a thinly veiled attempt to make up for the lack of American forces and the unwillingness to introduce more.
These efforts to shift responsibility onto others--regardless of whether they are ready, able, or willing--are wrong, and will in any case fail. The United States invaded Iraq, and did so for good reasons. It is the responsibility of the United States to build in Iraq a condition of security and stability, moving toward prosperity and democracy. Nor should we forget for a moment that the whole world is watching--especially Arabs and Muslims. Right now, a scant few months after the war, Washington already seems short of breath. This can only encourage our deadly enemies to escalate the pressure.
It is an illusion to imagine that this mess can be handed off to someone else and we can go on about our business. That option does not exist. The choices are stark: Either the United States does what it takes to succeed in Iraq, or we lose in Iraq. And if we lose, we will leave behind us not blue helmets but radicalism and chaos, a haven for terrorists, and a perception of American weakness and lack of resolve in the Middle East and reckless blundering around the world. That is the abyss we may be staring into if we do not shift course now.
We trust the president knows he cannot cut and run in Iraq. It is heartening that he has decided to send a large budget request for Iraq to Congress, though we fear he may actually have asked for too little in reconstruction funds. What we fear more, however, is that no amount of aid will suffice if Iraq remains insecure. The goal of a secure Iraq requires an unapologetic assertion of U.S. responsibility and a redoubling of U.S. effort--not clinging to illusions.
--Robert Kagan and William Kristol
America's Responsibility From the September 15, 2003 issue: Should the administration place all its bets on being able to find tens of thousands of foreign forces to fill the dangerous gap in Iraq?
by William Kristol and Robert Kagan
09/15/2003, Volume 009, Issue 01
DESPERATION BREEDS ILLUSIONS. The latest illusion, embraced reluctantly by the Bush administration and enthusiastically by its critics, is that the burden of establishing and maintaining security in Iraq can be substantially shifted off American shoulders and onto someone else's--whether it be the United Nations, Turkey, India, or the poor Iraqi people themselves. In principle, there is nothing wrong with trying to shift control back to the Iraqis. That should be our goal. Nor would any reasonable person deny that international assistance is essential to rebuilding Iraq. But what we are witnessing today is neither prudent multilateralism nor the normal, gradual process of turning power over to Iraqis that we all expected to occur over time. On both the international and Iraqi fronts, the administration's actions are being driven by the realization that there are too few American troops in Iraq.
At least the administration has begun dropping the pretense that everything is under control in Iraq and that the civilian authority has the resources and the field commanders the troops that they need. Last week the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, admitted that his forces could not handle any new eruption of conflict in Iraq should one occur. "If a militia or an internal conflict of some nature were to erupt," Gen. Sanchez told reporters in Baghdad, ". . . that would be a challenge out there that I do not have sufficient forces for." So when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says the United States has enough forces on the ground in Iraq, what he means is that we have enough so long as nothing untoward happens. But even that may be inaccurate. General Sanchez went on to acknowledge, as the Associated Press reported, that "the coalition lacks sufficient troops to protect Iraq's porous borders or its thousands of miles of highways." This is a special problem inasmuch as the main "security challenges" Sanchez sees "looming in the future" include the infiltration of al Qaeda and other foreign forces across those porous borders and along those highways.
It's not surprising, therefore, that the American officials most eager for a U.N. resolution these days are to be found not just in the State Department but also among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders of U.S. forces in Iraq. Secretary of State Powell's aides spun the press about their boss's big victory over Rumsfeld, thus perpetuating the petty personal feuds that plague this administration even during times of crisis. But in fact the administration's new push for U.N. backing is not a victory for the multilateralist spirit Powell allegedly harbors. It is a simple matter of an unwillingness by America's leaders to shoulder the necessary military burden.
But the bad news for the U.S. military, and for all those out there who would like to see us shift some of the burden of the Iraqi occupation to the U.N. over the next few months, is that we aren't likely to get more troops from the international community. It's a good bet France will strike a hard bargain before agreeing to any resolution acceptable to the administration--if it ever does. But even if a new resolution passes, don't expect a big influx of foreign forces. The Europeans have few, if any, troops to spare. India and Turkey, who are the real targets of the administration's diplomatic efforts, show every sign of not wanting to play. The Turkish government will apparently not even put the issue to a vote before October, and Turkish public opinion remains hostile to any deployment in Iraq. Nor should one have high hopes for India, where public opinion is also hostile and the government wary. After all, what country would want to rush troops into Iraq now when even the Americans have been unable to create a secure environment?
Never mind whether it is desirable to replace American troops with forces from Poland and Thailand and Mongolia in such sensitive places as Najaf. After the August 29 car bombing that killed the prominent Shia cleric Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, the U.S. Marines decided to extend their stay in Najaf another two weeks. Two weeks? Will things be back to normal in Najaf in two weeks? Then there are other problems. As Reuel Marc Gerecht points out elsewhere in this issue, there is a real question whether non-American forces, and particularly Muslim forces from Turkey and Pakistan, will make the situation in Iraq better or worse. This week the newly appointed Iraqi foreign minister said he was not happy about the idea of Turkish troops in Iraq. There's symmetry to that, because the Turks aren't happy about the idea either.
In short, it is foolish--and we believe irresponsible--for the administration to place all its bets on being able to find tens of thousands of foreign forces to fill the dangerous gap in Iraq in the coming months. We have nothing in principle against seeking a new U.N. resolution, or in further "internationalizing" the occupation of Iraq, if that will help bring security to the country. But the fact is that, at the end of two months of U.N. diplomacy, the United States is unlikely to have found real help. And then what will the administration do?
The same desperation is driving the administration to accelerate its efforts to turn over responsibility for maintaining security in Iraq to Iraqis. Obviously this ought to be the goal, and the sooner the better. But there are real questions about how quickly a reliable Iraqi force can be put in place. The original plan was to take more than a year to stand up an Iraqi army, and more than a year to train an Iraqi police force to reasonable standards. Now that's all being accelerated. Why? Not because the administration is suddenly eager to put an Iraqi face on security. Not because it's been determined that Iraqis don't need that much training after all. No, the accelerated timetable is due entirely to the fact that security problems are proliferating, and the U.S. forces in place are insufficient to deal with the mounting crisis. But premature overreliance on Iraqi forces is a bad substitute for adequate U.S. forces. General Sanchez admits that a serious Iraqi force won't be ready for several months. That's probably optimistic.
And there's another problem. In the interest of finding capable Iraqis, the administration has apparently been turning increasingly to former employees of Saddam Hussein's elite military and security forces. According to the Washington Post's Daniel Williams, "The need to quickly find skilled fighters and intelligence agents . . . has forced the Americans to dip into the ranks of units closely associated with Hussein." Most worrying if true is the fact that the new Interior Ministry's domestic intelligence network will, according to the Post, be "made up largely of secret police and intelligence agents from the ousted government." Administration officials say all recruits are "screened" to insure their loyalty to the new regime and their friendliness toward the United States. But as one Iraqi official commented, "Their ties may be difficult to break." And it only takes one or two mistakes in the vetting process to cause a catastrophe. Already American officials in Baghdad are investigating the possibility that the car bombing of police headquarters there may have involved Baathists within the new Iraqi security forces. Similar suspicions swirl around the bombing of the U.N. headquarters.
Plainly, there are no easy answers to the problems we face in Iraq right now. The American military is too small, thanks to a decade-and-a-half's irresponsible cutbacks, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. The administration seems to find it difficult to admit that more troops are needed, in Iraq and in the armed forces generally. But every day, the reality of our predicament becomes harder to paper over. The difficult straits in which we find ourselves will become painfully apparent when the administration's pleas for help at the U.N. prove unavailing. We trust that before that moment arrives, the White House will make the hard decision to put in the U.S. troops necessary to do the job. Though it is true that our military is smaller than it should be, there are troops available for Iraq, if we are willing to call on combat elements from the Marines, the National Guard, and Special Forces.
Again, we have no principled objection to involving the United Nations, to seeking more international help, and to giving Iraqis more responsibility for their own country. But in present circumstances, the hasty efforts in this direction have about them an unmistakable air of buck-passing. Here we find the Bush administration and its Democratic critics in altogether too much agreement: It's been four months since the war ended, and already everyone wants to shift the burden of responsibility off America's shoulders and onto someone else's, and the sooner the better. Democrats call for internationalization in Iraq not simply because they like multilateralism but because, as both Howard Dean and John Kerry have said, it will allow us to "bring our boys home." In this formulation, the call for the U.N. to take the lead role in Iraq is really a kind of veiled McGovernism. The administration's push to stand up an Iraqi force ahead of schedule is a thinly veiled attempt to make up for the lack of American forces and the unwillingness to introduce more.
These efforts to shift responsibility onto others--regardless of whether they are ready, able, or willing--are wrong, and will in any case fail. The United States invaded Iraq, and did so for good reasons. It is the responsibility of the United States to build in Iraq a condition of security and stability, moving toward prosperity and democracy. Nor should we forget for a moment that the whole world is watching--especially Arabs and Muslims. Right now, a scant few months after the war, Washington already seems short of breath. This can only encourage our deadly enemies to escalate the pressure.
It is an illusion to imagine that this mess can be handed off to someone else and we can go on about our business. That option does not exist. The choices are stark: Either the United States does what it takes to succeed in Iraq, or we lose in Iraq. And if we lose, we will leave behind us not blue helmets but radicalism and chaos, a haven for terrorists, and a perception of American weakness and lack of resolve in the Middle East and reckless blundering around the world. That is the abyss we may be staring into if we do not shift course now.
We trust the president knows he cannot cut and run in Iraq. It is heartening that he has decided to send a large budget request for Iraq to Congress, though we fear he may actually have asked for too little in reconstruction funds. What we fear more, however, is that no amount of aid will suffice if Iraq remains insecure. The goal of a secure Iraq requires an unapologetic assertion of U.S. responsibility and a redoubling of U.S. effort--not clinging to illusions.
--Robert Kagan and William Kristol
Monday, September 08, 2003
Bush's address to the nationThe following is the text of President's Bush address to the nation Sunday night. It was provided by the White House.
Good evening. I have asked for this time to keep you informed of America's actions in the war on terror.
Nearly two years ago, following deadly attacks on our country, we began a systematic campaign against terrorism. These months have been a time of new responsibilities, and sacrifice, and national resolve, and great progress.
America and a broad coalition acted first in Afghanistan, by destroying the training camps of terror, and removing the regime that harbored al Qaeda. In a series of raids and actions around the world, nearly two-thirds of al Qaeda's known leaders have been captured or killed, and we continue on al Qaeda's trail. We have exposed terrorist front groups, seized terrorist accounts, taken new measures to protect our homeland, and uncovered sleeper cells inside the United States. And we acted in Iraq, where the former regime sponsored terror, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, and for 12 years defied the clear demands of the United Nations Security Council. Our coalition enforced these international demands in one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history.
For a generation leading up to September 11, 2001, terrorists and their radical allies attacked innocent people in the Middle East and beyond, without facing a sustained and serious response. The terrorists became convinced that free nations were decadent and weak. And they grew bolder, believing that history was on their side. Since America put out the fires of September 11, and mourned our dead, and went to war, history has taken a different turn. We have carried the fight to the enemy. We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power.
This work continues. In Iraq, we are helping the longsuffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East. Together we are transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions. This undertaking is difficult and costly - yet worthy of our country, and critical to our security.
The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations. The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism. The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and on the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat.
Our enemies understand this. They know that a free Iraq will be free of them -- free of assassins, and torturers, and secret police. They know that as democracy rises in Iraq, all of their hateful ambitions will fall like the statues of the former dictator. And that is why, five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of killers is desperately trying to undermine Iraq's progress and throw the country into chaos.
Some of the attackers are former members of the old Saddam regime, who fled the battlefield and now fight in the shadows. Some of the attackers are foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations. We cannot be certain to what extent these groups work together. We do know they have a common goal -- reclaiming Iraq for tyranny.
Most, but not all, of these killers operate in one area of the country. The attacks you have heard and read about in the last few weeks have occurred predominantly in the central region of Iraq, between Baghdad and Tikrit -- Saddam Hussein's former stronghold. The North of Iraq is generally stable and is moving forward with reconstruction and self-government. The same trends are evident in the South, despite recent attacks by terrorist groups.
Though their attacks are localized, the terrorists and Saddam loyalists have done great harm. They have ambushed American and British service members -- who stand for freedom and order. They have killed civilian aid workers of the United Nations -- who represent the compassion and generosity of the world. They have bombed the Jordanian embassy -- the symbol of a peaceful Arab country. And last week they murdered a respected cleric and over a hundred Muslims at prayer -- bombing a holy shrine and a symbol of Islam's peaceful teachings.
This violence is directed, not only against our coalition, but against anyone in Iraq who stands for decency, and freedom, and progress.
There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.
Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there -- and there they must be defeated. This will take time, and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our own nation more secure.
America has done this kind of work before. Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany, and stood with them as they built representative governments. We committed years and resources to this cause. And that effort has been repaid many times over in three generations of friendship and peace. America today accepts the challenge of helping the Iraqi people in the same spirit -- for their sake, and our own.
Our strategy in Iraq has three objectives -- destroying the terrorists -- enlisting the support of other nations for a free Iraq -- and helping Iraqis assume responsibility for their own defense and their own future.
First, we are taking direct action against the terrorists in the Iraqi theater, which is the surest way to prevent future attacks on coalition forces and the Iraqi people. We are staying on the offensive, with a series of precise strikes against enemy targets increasingly guided by intelligence given to us by Iraqi citizens. Since the end of major combat operations, we have conducted raids seizing many caches of enemy weapons and massive amounts of ammunition, and we have captured or killed hundreds of Saddam loyalists and terrorists. So far, of the 55 most wanted former Iraqi leaders, 42 are dead or in custody. We are sending a clear message: Anyone who seeks to harm our soldiers can know that our soldiers are hunting for them.
Second, we are committed to expanding international cooperation in the reconstruction and security of Iraq, just as we are in Afghanistan. Our military commanders in Iraq advise me that the current number of American troops -- nearly 130,000 -- is appropriate to their mission. They are joined by over 20,000 service members from 29 other countries. Two multinational divisions, led by the British and the Poles, are serving alongside our forces -- and in order to share the burden more broadly, our commanders have requested a third multinational division to serve in Iraq.
Some countries have requested an explicit authorization of the United Nations Security Council before committing troops to Iraq. I have directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to introduce a new Security Council resolution, which would authorize the creation of a multinational force in Iraq, led by America.
I recognize that not all of our friends agreed with our decision to enforce the Security Council resolutions and remove Saddam Hussein from power. Yet we cannot let past differences interfere with present duties. Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation.
Third, we are encouraging the orderly transfer of sovereignty and authority to the Iraqi people. Our coalition came to Iraq as liberators and we will depart as liberators. Right now Iraq has its own Governing Council, comprised of 25 leaders representing Iraq's diverse people. The Governing Council recently appointed cabinet ministers to run government departments. Already more than 90 percent of towns and cities have functioning local governments, which are restoring basic services. We are helping to train civil defense forces to keep order -- and an Iraqi police service to enforce the law -- and a facilities protection service -- and Iraqi border guards to help secure the borders -- and a new Iraqi army. In all these roles, there are now some 60,000 Iraqi citizens under arms, defending the security of their own country -- and we are accelerating the training of more.
Iraq is ready to take the next steps toward self-government. The Security Council resolution we introduce will encourage Iraq's Governing Council to submit a plan and a timetable for the drafting of a constitution, and for free elections. From the outset, I have expressed confidence in the ability of the Iraqi people to govern themselves. Now they must rise to the responsibilities of a free people and secure the blessings of their own liberty.
Our strategy in Iraq will require new resources. We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan. I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion. The request will cover ongoing military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, which we expect will cost 66 billion dollars over the next year. This budget request will support our commitment to helping the Iraqi and Afghan people rebuild their own nations, after decades of oppression and mismanagement. We will provide funds to help them improve security. And we will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads, and medical clinics. This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore to our own security. Now and in the future, we will support our troops and we will keep our word to the more than 50 million people of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Later this month, Secretary Powell will meet with representatives of many nations to discuss their financial contributions to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Next month, he will hold a similar funding conference for the reconstruction of Iraq. Europe, Japan, and states in the Middle East all will benefit from the success of freedom in these two countries, and they should contribute to that success.
The people of Iraq are emerging from a long trial. For them, there will be no going back to the days of the dictator -- to the miseries and humiliation he inflicted on that good country. For the Middle East and the world, there will be no going back to the days of fear -- when a brutal and aggressive tyrant possessed terrible weapons. And for America, there will be no going back to the era before September 11th, 2001 -- to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength -- they are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today, so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.
The heaviest burdens in our war on terror fall, as always, on the men and women of our armed forces and our intelligence services. They have removed gathering threats to America and our friends, and this nation takes great pride in their incredible achievements. We are grateful for their skill and courage, and for their acts of decency, which have shown America's character to the world. We honor the sacrifice of their families. And we mourn every American who has died so bravely, and so far from home.
The Americans who assume great risks overseas understand the great cause they are in. Not long ago I received a letter from a captain in the 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad. He wrote about his pride in serving a just cause, and about the deep desire of Iraqis for liberty. "I see it," he said, "in the eyes of a hungry people every day here. They are starved for freedom and opportunity." And he concluded, "I just thought you'd like a note from the 'front lines of freedom.'" That Army captain, and all of our men and women serving in the war on terror, are on the front lines of freedom. And I want each of them to know: Your country thanks you, and your country supports you.
Fellow citizens: We have been tested these past 24 months, and the dangers have not passed. Yet Americans are responding with courage and confidence. We accept the duties of our generation. We are active and resolute in our own defense. We are serving in freedom's cause -- and that is the cause of all mankind.
Thank you, and good night. And may God continue to bless America.
Good evening. I have asked for this time to keep you informed of America's actions in the war on terror.
Nearly two years ago, following deadly attacks on our country, we began a systematic campaign against terrorism. These months have been a time of new responsibilities, and sacrifice, and national resolve, and great progress.
America and a broad coalition acted first in Afghanistan, by destroying the training camps of terror, and removing the regime that harbored al Qaeda. In a series of raids and actions around the world, nearly two-thirds of al Qaeda's known leaders have been captured or killed, and we continue on al Qaeda's trail. We have exposed terrorist front groups, seized terrorist accounts, taken new measures to protect our homeland, and uncovered sleeper cells inside the United States. And we acted in Iraq, where the former regime sponsored terror, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, and for 12 years defied the clear demands of the United Nations Security Council. Our coalition enforced these international demands in one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history.
For a generation leading up to September 11, 2001, terrorists and their radical allies attacked innocent people in the Middle East and beyond, without facing a sustained and serious response. The terrorists became convinced that free nations were decadent and weak. And they grew bolder, believing that history was on their side. Since America put out the fires of September 11, and mourned our dead, and went to war, history has taken a different turn. We have carried the fight to the enemy. We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power.
This work continues. In Iraq, we are helping the longsuffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East. Together we are transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions. This undertaking is difficult and costly - yet worthy of our country, and critical to our security.
The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations. The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism. The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and on the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat.
Our enemies understand this. They know that a free Iraq will be free of them -- free of assassins, and torturers, and secret police. They know that as democracy rises in Iraq, all of their hateful ambitions will fall like the statues of the former dictator. And that is why, five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of killers is desperately trying to undermine Iraq's progress and throw the country into chaos.
Some of the attackers are former members of the old Saddam regime, who fled the battlefield and now fight in the shadows. Some of the attackers are foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations. We cannot be certain to what extent these groups work together. We do know they have a common goal -- reclaiming Iraq for tyranny.
Most, but not all, of these killers operate in one area of the country. The attacks you have heard and read about in the last few weeks have occurred predominantly in the central region of Iraq, between Baghdad and Tikrit -- Saddam Hussein's former stronghold. The North of Iraq is generally stable and is moving forward with reconstruction and self-government. The same trends are evident in the South, despite recent attacks by terrorist groups.
Though their attacks are localized, the terrorists and Saddam loyalists have done great harm. They have ambushed American and British service members -- who stand for freedom and order. They have killed civilian aid workers of the United Nations -- who represent the compassion and generosity of the world. They have bombed the Jordanian embassy -- the symbol of a peaceful Arab country. And last week they murdered a respected cleric and over a hundred Muslims at prayer -- bombing a holy shrine and a symbol of Islam's peaceful teachings.
This violence is directed, not only against our coalition, but against anyone in Iraq who stands for decency, and freedom, and progress.
There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.
Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there -- and there they must be defeated. This will take time, and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our own nation more secure.
America has done this kind of work before. Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany, and stood with them as they built representative governments. We committed years and resources to this cause. And that effort has been repaid many times over in three generations of friendship and peace. America today accepts the challenge of helping the Iraqi people in the same spirit -- for their sake, and our own.
Our strategy in Iraq has three objectives -- destroying the terrorists -- enlisting the support of other nations for a free Iraq -- and helping Iraqis assume responsibility for their own defense and their own future.
First, we are taking direct action against the terrorists in the Iraqi theater, which is the surest way to prevent future attacks on coalition forces and the Iraqi people. We are staying on the offensive, with a series of precise strikes against enemy targets increasingly guided by intelligence given to us by Iraqi citizens. Since the end of major combat operations, we have conducted raids seizing many caches of enemy weapons and massive amounts of ammunition, and we have captured or killed hundreds of Saddam loyalists and terrorists. So far, of the 55 most wanted former Iraqi leaders, 42 are dead or in custody. We are sending a clear message: Anyone who seeks to harm our soldiers can know that our soldiers are hunting for them.
Second, we are committed to expanding international cooperation in the reconstruction and security of Iraq, just as we are in Afghanistan. Our military commanders in Iraq advise me that the current number of American troops -- nearly 130,000 -- is appropriate to their mission. They are joined by over 20,000 service members from 29 other countries. Two multinational divisions, led by the British and the Poles, are serving alongside our forces -- and in order to share the burden more broadly, our commanders have requested a third multinational division to serve in Iraq.
Some countries have requested an explicit authorization of the United Nations Security Council before committing troops to Iraq. I have directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to introduce a new Security Council resolution, which would authorize the creation of a multinational force in Iraq, led by America.
I recognize that not all of our friends agreed with our decision to enforce the Security Council resolutions and remove Saddam Hussein from power. Yet we cannot let past differences interfere with present duties. Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation.
Third, we are encouraging the orderly transfer of sovereignty and authority to the Iraqi people. Our coalition came to Iraq as liberators and we will depart as liberators. Right now Iraq has its own Governing Council, comprised of 25 leaders representing Iraq's diverse people. The Governing Council recently appointed cabinet ministers to run government departments. Already more than 90 percent of towns and cities have functioning local governments, which are restoring basic services. We are helping to train civil defense forces to keep order -- and an Iraqi police service to enforce the law -- and a facilities protection service -- and Iraqi border guards to help secure the borders -- and a new Iraqi army. In all these roles, there are now some 60,000 Iraqi citizens under arms, defending the security of their own country -- and we are accelerating the training of more.
Iraq is ready to take the next steps toward self-government. The Security Council resolution we introduce will encourage Iraq's Governing Council to submit a plan and a timetable for the drafting of a constitution, and for free elections. From the outset, I have expressed confidence in the ability of the Iraqi people to govern themselves. Now they must rise to the responsibilities of a free people and secure the blessings of their own liberty.
Our strategy in Iraq will require new resources. We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan. I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion. The request will cover ongoing military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, which we expect will cost 66 billion dollars over the next year. This budget request will support our commitment to helping the Iraqi and Afghan people rebuild their own nations, after decades of oppression and mismanagement. We will provide funds to help them improve security. And we will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads, and medical clinics. This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore to our own security. Now and in the future, we will support our troops and we will keep our word to the more than 50 million people of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Later this month, Secretary Powell will meet with representatives of many nations to discuss their financial contributions to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Next month, he will hold a similar funding conference for the reconstruction of Iraq. Europe, Japan, and states in the Middle East all will benefit from the success of freedom in these two countries, and they should contribute to that success.
The people of Iraq are emerging from a long trial. For them, there will be no going back to the days of the dictator -- to the miseries and humiliation he inflicted on that good country. For the Middle East and the world, there will be no going back to the days of fear -- when a brutal and aggressive tyrant possessed terrible weapons. And for America, there will be no going back to the era before September 11th, 2001 -- to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength -- they are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today, so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.
The heaviest burdens in our war on terror fall, as always, on the men and women of our armed forces and our intelligence services. They have removed gathering threats to America and our friends, and this nation takes great pride in their incredible achievements. We are grateful for their skill and courage, and for their acts of decency, which have shown America's character to the world. We honor the sacrifice of their families. And we mourn every American who has died so bravely, and so far from home.
The Americans who assume great risks overseas understand the great cause they are in. Not long ago I received a letter from a captain in the 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad. He wrote about his pride in serving a just cause, and about the deep desire of Iraqis for liberty. "I see it," he said, "in the eyes of a hungry people every day here. They are starved for freedom and opportunity." And he concluded, "I just thought you'd like a note from the 'front lines of freedom.'" That Army captain, and all of our men and women serving in the war on terror, are on the front lines of freedom. And I want each of them to know: Your country thanks you, and your country supports you.
Fellow citizens: We have been tested these past 24 months, and the dangers have not passed. Yet Americans are responding with courage and confidence. We accept the duties of our generation. We are active and resolute in our own defense. We are serving in freedom's cause -- and that is the cause of all mankind.
Thank you, and good night. And may God continue to bless America.
Could this be true?
Euro-Trashing
C'est la guerre.
How clever of President Bush.
On Tuesday, he had all Washington atwitter. Everyone — or at least every Democrat and all the "realistic" Republicans such as Sen. Chuck Hagel — was saying: "Hallelujah, Bush has finally seen the light!" At long last, he's recognized "reality." Thank goodness he's swallowed his silly pride and shoved aside those nasty, nattering neocons and instructed his sensible Secretary of State to go to the U.N. to ask for the help America so obviously and so desperately needs.
But Bush, that sly old fox, knew what would happen next. Colin Powell would ask Jacques Chirac, Gerhardt Schroeder, and Kofi Annan, et al. nicely to lend a helping hand. Powell would diplomatically ignore the fact that these leaders of the international community had never had the slightest interest in seeing the day when the people of Iraq were liberated from the oppression of a murderous dictator.
Mr. Powell would tactfully make believe it was not true that they were, in fact, quite chagrined that the Americans had gone ahead and traded Iraqi's stability for the sake of something as laughable as Iraqi freedom.
Mr. Powell would pretend, as a gentleman should, that our allies — they are our allies, aren't they? — would welcome an invitation to participate in the historic effort to help Iraqis build a decent, free and prosperous nation, the first democracy in the Arab world.
And as Mr. Bush knew, for his trouble Mr. Powell would get slapped — very publicly — in the face.
And then the whole world — or at least the American voting public — would see that it wasn't Bush who was being unreasonable and putting pride ahead of progress and all that. They'd see clearly that the lack of international cooperation is the fault of the European leaders — men who care not a fig about Iraq's future but who love humiliating an American president, especially this American president.
By the way: It's not like the U.N. or the Europeans really have much to contribute to the two tasks that urgently need to get done in Iraq. Blue Helmets aren't about to hunt down Baathist remnants and their jihadi allies from abroad. The Germans have ruled out any military role. I suppose the French could send in the Foreign Legion, but that's not likely unless we're willing to give them a whole lot of Iraqi oil wells in return.
The second big challenge is to begin to build sturdy democratic institutions in Iraq. Since the French weren't able to do that in Cote D'Ivoire where they've been trying for 40 years, how adept are they likely to be in Iraq?
And obviously, the U.N. has no particular aptitude for nation-building. In fact, the U.N. does not even prefer democracies over dictatorships. Rather it is neutral on such questions. That's why there is no fuss at the U.N. over having Syria sit on the U.N. Security Council, and Libya head the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
So what could the Europeans do to be useful? Well, they could contribute a whole lot of money to a sort of Marshall Plan for Iraq. But they won't do that because there is a huge difference between the Marshall Plan that assisted Europe after World War II and any plan to assist Iraq now.
That difference is complicated to explain but it boils down to this: In the former case, Europeans received money. In the latter case, Europeans would have to spend money.
Actually, that's wasn't so hard to explain after all.
— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.
Euro-Trashing
C'est la guerre.
How clever of President Bush.
On Tuesday, he had all Washington atwitter. Everyone — or at least every Democrat and all the "realistic" Republicans such as Sen. Chuck Hagel — was saying: "Hallelujah, Bush has finally seen the light!" At long last, he's recognized "reality." Thank goodness he's swallowed his silly pride and shoved aside those nasty, nattering neocons and instructed his sensible Secretary of State to go to the U.N. to ask for the help America so obviously and so desperately needs.
But Bush, that sly old fox, knew what would happen next. Colin Powell would ask Jacques Chirac, Gerhardt Schroeder, and Kofi Annan, et al. nicely to lend a helping hand. Powell would diplomatically ignore the fact that these leaders of the international community had never had the slightest interest in seeing the day when the people of Iraq were liberated from the oppression of a murderous dictator.
Mr. Powell would tactfully make believe it was not true that they were, in fact, quite chagrined that the Americans had gone ahead and traded Iraqi's stability for the sake of something as laughable as Iraqi freedom.
Mr. Powell would pretend, as a gentleman should, that our allies — they are our allies, aren't they? — would welcome an invitation to participate in the historic effort to help Iraqis build a decent, free and prosperous nation, the first democracy in the Arab world.
And as Mr. Bush knew, for his trouble Mr. Powell would get slapped — very publicly — in the face.
And then the whole world — or at least the American voting public — would see that it wasn't Bush who was being unreasonable and putting pride ahead of progress and all that. They'd see clearly that the lack of international cooperation is the fault of the European leaders — men who care not a fig about Iraq's future but who love humiliating an American president, especially this American president.
By the way: It's not like the U.N. or the Europeans really have much to contribute to the two tasks that urgently need to get done in Iraq. Blue Helmets aren't about to hunt down Baathist remnants and their jihadi allies from abroad. The Germans have ruled out any military role. I suppose the French could send in the Foreign Legion, but that's not likely unless we're willing to give them a whole lot of Iraqi oil wells in return.
The second big challenge is to begin to build sturdy democratic institutions in Iraq. Since the French weren't able to do that in Cote D'Ivoire where they've been trying for 40 years, how adept are they likely to be in Iraq?
And obviously, the U.N. has no particular aptitude for nation-building. In fact, the U.N. does not even prefer democracies over dictatorships. Rather it is neutral on such questions. That's why there is no fuss at the U.N. over having Syria sit on the U.N. Security Council, and Libya head the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
So what could the Europeans do to be useful? Well, they could contribute a whole lot of money to a sort of Marshall Plan for Iraq. But they won't do that because there is a huge difference between the Marshall Plan that assisted Europe after World War II and any plan to assist Iraq now.
That difference is complicated to explain but it boils down to this: In the former case, Europeans received money. In the latter case, Europeans would have to spend money.
Actually, that's wasn't so hard to explain after all.
— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.
