Wednesday, August 11, 2004
The Dinner Party
An evening out with sophisticated anti-Bush anti-Americanism.
by Irwin M. Stelzer
ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES of spending a great deal of time in London is the opportunity to meet with Britain's prime minister from time-to-time, and to watch him in action through the eyes of the British media. Americans who have witnessed his performances in the press conferences that inevitably follow his visits to Washington and Crawford almost uniformly admire his eloquence and passion. But few appreciate the risks he is taking to support America's efforts to create a pacific, democratic and prosperous Iraq in the place of Saddam Hussein's hell-on-the-Euphrates.
President Bush does. Bob Woodward reports that the president feared that if Blair were to send troops to Iraq, his government would fall. So he offered his friend the opportunity of holding our coat rather than joining our assault. Blair declined the quite respectable role of "peacekeeper," and stood with us, bringing the fury of large segments of his own party and, a few weeks ago just as Parliament was rising for its summer recess, the leader of the Tories down on his head.
It is no secret that our president is wildly unpopular among Britain's chattering classes, as distinct from its far wiser cab drivers and John, my haircutter. With the notable exception of a few newspapers, the press and the BBC pour out anti-American vitriol that often makes Al Jazeera seem a paragon of objective reporting. The situation is so bad that the joke at No. 10 Downing Street--"joke," as in "you will laugh so hard that you will cry"--is that George W. Bush is less popular in certain British circles than Osama bin Laden.
To understand the depths of this Bush-hating anti-Americanism, let's get up close and personal, as I am told they say in Crawford. Which brings me to a dinner party my wife, Cita, and I attended in a fashionable London town house. The usual assortment of media folk, City (financial) types, and professionals, with the odd (very) member of Parliament. It was a group put together by a very gracious hostess and her very conservative husband. Sounds like fun. But, at least for pro-Bush, anti-Saddam Americans, it was the sort of evening that makes one long for a good dose of Fox News, followed by readings from the works of Donald Rumsfeld.
THE WAR ON TERROR, announces one guest, could have been avoided if the Americans hadn't invaded Iraq. But the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon--not to mention various embassy bombings and the assault on the Cole--preceded the invasion of Iraq, I noted, in a gentle effort to help this guest reorganize her calendar of events. Ah, but original sin, the event that preceded all of the ones I cited, is the Jews' beastly treatment of the Arabs.
We are gluttons for punishment, not to mention for wonderful puddings of the sort being set before us. So we decided that the guestly thing to do was to stifle our desire to leave, running the risk that continuing the discussion might result in the violent response many Brits assume comes naturally to gun-totin', SUV-drivin', Americans. (They couldn't work their God-fearing epithet into that litany, as it might have impelled us to turn the other cheek, which they for some strange reason don't expect of God-fearing Americans.)
Besides, rational argument will conquer all, I was brought up to believe. So I gently inquired, "What would you have done after September 11 if you were president of the United States?" The answer did more than even a steady diet of BBC broadcasts can do to make us realize just what Tony Blair is up against: "I would have been nicer to the Arabs, and made the Jews be nicer to the Arabs."
Mind you: this is not Nancy Astor explaining the virtues of Adolph Hitler to her anti-Semitic friends in the run-up to World War II. This is Great Britain, circa 2004. And so to bed, after absolving our host and hostess of all blame for the views of their guests.
BUT NOT TO SLEEP, before reflecting on the situation that Blair faces. This is a prime minister who is up to his, er, hips in alligators. The public sector unions are threatening to strike unless granted inflationary wage increases; the transport system is in disarray for reasons that antedate his move into No. 10; crime is on the rise; one former minister is accusing him of lying about weapons of mass destruction and another is calling for negotiations with bin Laden (that worked in Ireland, didn't it?); and his left is so furious over his decision to support Bush in Iraq that it would gladly risk losing his vote-getting ability if they could force him to take up permanent residence in Crawford, Texas.
And now he faces a brawl over his quite crazy decision to sign on to a new European constitution that cedes great swaths of British sovereignty to a swollen bureaucracy that has brought double-digit unemployment to France and Germany, and counts Spain's appeaser government as a star recruit to its Franco-German axis.
Well, no one is perfect. But from an American point of view, so long as he can retain Britain's right to make its own decisions about the use of its armed forces--not a certainty if the new constitution is adopted--he is close. This is due in part to Blair's long-run view that Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher had it right when they insisted that the Anglo-American alliance is the cornerstone of British security, and of the ability of the West to preserve its values from assaults by fascists, communists, and, now, Islamic fanatics. Bush may not be popular in Britain, but neither was Ronald Reagan. And all that the British and Americans accomplished the last time a tough British prime minister and an unpopular American president decided to get together to defend the West was to win the Cold War.
BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE in Britain too long to realize that Blair is taking a risk that Thatcher didn't. Reagan was unpopular, but viewed as dangerous because of a low IQ, not because of an inherent tendency towards belligerence. Dumb beats belligerent in the international popularity sweepstakes. Hollywood trumps Texas. Despite its recent penchant for violence, Hollywood is still associated with wonderful movies, Fred Astaire dancing down curved stairways, Judy Garland singing on a trolley, and (cheers in Europe) liberated attitudes towards sex. No disabling moral certainties.
Texas, on the other hand, is all guns, with butter only for rich oil barons; God-in-politics; the death penalty; evil-doers and good guys; and, in the case of the president, what historian T. R. Fehrenbach calls "a certain Texan belligerence." Those are heavy burdens for Blair to bear, which he does because unseating Saddam was "the right thing" to do if what he sees as this deadly serious war on terror is to be won.
As Blair wryly says when told how popular he is with most Americans, "Unfortunately, they don't vote here." But we do go to dinner parties here, and do our best to make his case--before fleeing lest the crockery fly.
Irwin M. Stelzer is director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, a columnist for the Sunday Times (London), a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard.
An evening out with sophisticated anti-Bush anti-Americanism.
by Irwin M. Stelzer
ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES of spending a great deal of time in London is the opportunity to meet with Britain's prime minister from time-to-time, and to watch him in action through the eyes of the British media. Americans who have witnessed his performances in the press conferences that inevitably follow his visits to Washington and Crawford almost uniformly admire his eloquence and passion. But few appreciate the risks he is taking to support America's efforts to create a pacific, democratic and prosperous Iraq in the place of Saddam Hussein's hell-on-the-Euphrates.
President Bush does. Bob Woodward reports that the president feared that if Blair were to send troops to Iraq, his government would fall. So he offered his friend the opportunity of holding our coat rather than joining our assault. Blair declined the quite respectable role of "peacekeeper," and stood with us, bringing the fury of large segments of his own party and, a few weeks ago just as Parliament was rising for its summer recess, the leader of the Tories down on his head.
It is no secret that our president is wildly unpopular among Britain's chattering classes, as distinct from its far wiser cab drivers and John, my haircutter. With the notable exception of a few newspapers, the press and the BBC pour out anti-American vitriol that often makes Al Jazeera seem a paragon of objective reporting. The situation is so bad that the joke at No. 10 Downing Street--"joke," as in "you will laugh so hard that you will cry"--is that George W. Bush is less popular in certain British circles than Osama bin Laden.
To understand the depths of this Bush-hating anti-Americanism, let's get up close and personal, as I am told they say in Crawford. Which brings me to a dinner party my wife, Cita, and I attended in a fashionable London town house. The usual assortment of media folk, City (financial) types, and professionals, with the odd (very) member of Parliament. It was a group put together by a very gracious hostess and her very conservative husband. Sounds like fun. But, at least for pro-Bush, anti-Saddam Americans, it was the sort of evening that makes one long for a good dose of Fox News, followed by readings from the works of Donald Rumsfeld.
THE WAR ON TERROR, announces one guest, could have been avoided if the Americans hadn't invaded Iraq. But the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon--not to mention various embassy bombings and the assault on the Cole--preceded the invasion of Iraq, I noted, in a gentle effort to help this guest reorganize her calendar of events. Ah, but original sin, the event that preceded all of the ones I cited, is the Jews' beastly treatment of the Arabs.
We are gluttons for punishment, not to mention for wonderful puddings of the sort being set before us. So we decided that the guestly thing to do was to stifle our desire to leave, running the risk that continuing the discussion might result in the violent response many Brits assume comes naturally to gun-totin', SUV-drivin', Americans. (They couldn't work their God-fearing epithet into that litany, as it might have impelled us to turn the other cheek, which they for some strange reason don't expect of God-fearing Americans.)
Besides, rational argument will conquer all, I was brought up to believe. So I gently inquired, "What would you have done after September 11 if you were president of the United States?" The answer did more than even a steady diet of BBC broadcasts can do to make us realize just what Tony Blair is up against: "I would have been nicer to the Arabs, and made the Jews be nicer to the Arabs."
Mind you: this is not Nancy Astor explaining the virtues of Adolph Hitler to her anti-Semitic friends in the run-up to World War II. This is Great Britain, circa 2004. And so to bed, after absolving our host and hostess of all blame for the views of their guests.
BUT NOT TO SLEEP, before reflecting on the situation that Blair faces. This is a prime minister who is up to his, er, hips in alligators. The public sector unions are threatening to strike unless granted inflationary wage increases; the transport system is in disarray for reasons that antedate his move into No. 10; crime is on the rise; one former minister is accusing him of lying about weapons of mass destruction and another is calling for negotiations with bin Laden (that worked in Ireland, didn't it?); and his left is so furious over his decision to support Bush in Iraq that it would gladly risk losing his vote-getting ability if they could force him to take up permanent residence in Crawford, Texas.
And now he faces a brawl over his quite crazy decision to sign on to a new European constitution that cedes great swaths of British sovereignty to a swollen bureaucracy that has brought double-digit unemployment to France and Germany, and counts Spain's appeaser government as a star recruit to its Franco-German axis.
Well, no one is perfect. But from an American point of view, so long as he can retain Britain's right to make its own decisions about the use of its armed forces--not a certainty if the new constitution is adopted--he is close. This is due in part to Blair's long-run view that Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher had it right when they insisted that the Anglo-American alliance is the cornerstone of British security, and of the ability of the West to preserve its values from assaults by fascists, communists, and, now, Islamic fanatics. Bush may not be popular in Britain, but neither was Ronald Reagan. And all that the British and Americans accomplished the last time a tough British prime minister and an unpopular American president decided to get together to defend the West was to win the Cold War.
BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE in Britain too long to realize that Blair is taking a risk that Thatcher didn't. Reagan was unpopular, but viewed as dangerous because of a low IQ, not because of an inherent tendency towards belligerence. Dumb beats belligerent in the international popularity sweepstakes. Hollywood trumps Texas. Despite its recent penchant for violence, Hollywood is still associated with wonderful movies, Fred Astaire dancing down curved stairways, Judy Garland singing on a trolley, and (cheers in Europe) liberated attitudes towards sex. No disabling moral certainties.
Texas, on the other hand, is all guns, with butter only for rich oil barons; God-in-politics; the death penalty; evil-doers and good guys; and, in the case of the president, what historian T. R. Fehrenbach calls "a certain Texan belligerence." Those are heavy burdens for Blair to bear, which he does because unseating Saddam was "the right thing" to do if what he sees as this deadly serious war on terror is to be won.
As Blair wryly says when told how popular he is with most Americans, "Unfortunately, they don't vote here." But we do go to dinner parties here, and do our best to make his case--before fleeing lest the crockery fly.
Irwin M. Stelzer is director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, a columnist for the Sunday Times (London), a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard.
Sistani and the future of the Hawza
The media continues to speculate wildly on the timing of Grand Ayatollah Ali Taqi Al-Sistani's unexpected departure from Najaf to London for emergency heart treatment. While several of his spokesmen have denied that the medical condition of the 74 year-old cleric is critical, I have personally heard from an informed source who is a close relative of Sistani's agent in Basrah that he has been suffering from ischemic heart disease for some time and that he had recently experienced a myocardial infarction just 2 or 3 weeks before the fighting broke out in Najaf.
He was advised by his family and close supporters to leave Najaf immediately for treatment and rest in London. They had already coordinated with Iraqi, US and British authorities for the preparations. The old man stubbornly refused to leave, mentioning that he had remained in Najaf during even darker days. However, he resigned grudgingly to their suggestions later on. He was practically hauled to London by his son and his senior aides. My source also tells me that the other three senior clerics of the Hawza were also aware of what was to take place in Najaf, and that they had been advised by the governor's office and SCIRI to either leave Najaf for safer ground or lay low. He says that people from Sadr's office grew extremely uncomfortable on hearing this and that they had sent someone to either beg/convince or prevent Sistani from leaving Najaf. They have been claiming that Sistani was forced to leave Najaf by the Iraqi and US authorities ever since.
Sistani refused to take a US helicopter and instead was driven to Baghdad Airport by the Diwaniyah-Hilla-Baghdad road in a closely guarded yet inconspicuous convoy. He arrived in London via Beirut, and there was some footage of his arrival at Heathrow. He was with his son Mohammed Ridha and one of his aides, and they were received by his London agent under the eyes of gawking British security personnel. More footage was released yesterday of an old tired Sistani lying down in a bed at the Cromwell hospital. He is said to have been visited by an Iranian official who offered him Tehran's services, and that he snapped back at him that all he wanted was for Iran to leave him and Iraq alone.
So that settles all the conspiracy theories. Some people have been claiming that Sistani was flown away to London to 'remove' him from the scene in Najaf against his will. They underestimate the power of a supreme Hawza cleric, if Sistani wished, he could quite easily issue a fatwa or a statement from his hospital bed against the US actions. A supreme marji' can't easily be intimidated or silenced. They forget that Sayyid Mohammed Taqi Al-Shirazi issued the fatwa that sparked the massive 1920 uprising against the British while he was on his death bed, and he did indeed die days later but the revolt did not.
Also, the sensational media's talk of a power vacuum, or a struggle in Najaf among the clerics on the event of Sistani's death betrays their ignorance of the traditional Shia leadership hierarchy. Sistani would be succeeded by either Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Ishaq Al-Fayyadh or Grand Ayatollah Bashir Al-Najafi, with the former being the most likely candidate even though they are equals in terms of scholarship and Islamic jurisprudence. Al-Fayyadh is of Afghani origin, while Al-Najafi is Pakistani. Al-Fayyadh was also, together with Sistani, one of Al-Khoei's most favourite students and esteemed aides. Grand Ayatollah Abu Al-Qasim Al-Khoei (who is Sistani's predecessor) even allowed Sistani, Al-Fayyadh, and Mohammed Baqir Al-Sadr to issue fatwas on his behalf at many occasions. His followers are all over the Shi'ite world from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.
Furthermore, Grand Ayatollah Al-Fayyadh is known to be the most moderate of Shi'ite marji'iya, even more so than Sistani. He belongs to the traditional old school of the Hawza (that of Abu Al-Hassan Al-Asfahani, Sadiq Al-Shirazi, Al-Barujardi, Hussein Kashif Al-Ghatta', Muhsin Al-Hakim, and Al-Khoei) that calls for a distinct seperation of state and religion and an utter contempt for the notion of Wilayet Al-Faqih (the rule of the jurisprudent) that was preached by Khomeini and taken up by the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
So I wish to comfort the sensational media that there will be no power struggles in the Hawza after Sistani's death. There will always be a peaceful consensus on who would be the supreme marji' in Najaf, as it has always been that way for centuries.
The media continues to speculate wildly on the timing of Grand Ayatollah Ali Taqi Al-Sistani's unexpected departure from Najaf to London for emergency heart treatment. While several of his spokesmen have denied that the medical condition of the 74 year-old cleric is critical, I have personally heard from an informed source who is a close relative of Sistani's agent in Basrah that he has been suffering from ischemic heart disease for some time and that he had recently experienced a myocardial infarction just 2 or 3 weeks before the fighting broke out in Najaf.
He was advised by his family and close supporters to leave Najaf immediately for treatment and rest in London. They had already coordinated with Iraqi, US and British authorities for the preparations. The old man stubbornly refused to leave, mentioning that he had remained in Najaf during even darker days. However, he resigned grudgingly to their suggestions later on. He was practically hauled to London by his son and his senior aides. My source also tells me that the other three senior clerics of the Hawza were also aware of what was to take place in Najaf, and that they had been advised by the governor's office and SCIRI to either leave Najaf for safer ground or lay low. He says that people from Sadr's office grew extremely uncomfortable on hearing this and that they had sent someone to either beg/convince or prevent Sistani from leaving Najaf. They have been claiming that Sistani was forced to leave Najaf by the Iraqi and US authorities ever since.
Sistani refused to take a US helicopter and instead was driven to Baghdad Airport by the Diwaniyah-Hilla-Baghdad road in a closely guarded yet inconspicuous convoy. He arrived in London via Beirut, and there was some footage of his arrival at Heathrow. He was with his son Mohammed Ridha and one of his aides, and they were received by his London agent under the eyes of gawking British security personnel. More footage was released yesterday of an old tired Sistani lying down in a bed at the Cromwell hospital. He is said to have been visited by an Iranian official who offered him Tehran's services, and that he snapped back at him that all he wanted was for Iran to leave him and Iraq alone.
So that settles all the conspiracy theories. Some people have been claiming that Sistani was flown away to London to 'remove' him from the scene in Najaf against his will. They underestimate the power of a supreme Hawza cleric, if Sistani wished, he could quite easily issue a fatwa or a statement from his hospital bed against the US actions. A supreme marji' can't easily be intimidated or silenced. They forget that Sayyid Mohammed Taqi Al-Shirazi issued the fatwa that sparked the massive 1920 uprising against the British while he was on his death bed, and he did indeed die days later but the revolt did not.
Also, the sensational media's talk of a power vacuum, or a struggle in Najaf among the clerics on the event of Sistani's death betrays their ignorance of the traditional Shia leadership hierarchy. Sistani would be succeeded by either Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Ishaq Al-Fayyadh or Grand Ayatollah Bashir Al-Najafi, with the former being the most likely candidate even though they are equals in terms of scholarship and Islamic jurisprudence. Al-Fayyadh is of Afghani origin, while Al-Najafi is Pakistani. Al-Fayyadh was also, together with Sistani, one of Al-Khoei's most favourite students and esteemed aides. Grand Ayatollah Abu Al-Qasim Al-Khoei (who is Sistani's predecessor) even allowed Sistani, Al-Fayyadh, and Mohammed Baqir Al-Sadr to issue fatwas on his behalf at many occasions. His followers are all over the Shi'ite world from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.
Furthermore, Grand Ayatollah Al-Fayyadh is known to be the most moderate of Shi'ite marji'iya, even more so than Sistani. He belongs to the traditional old school of the Hawza (that of Abu Al-Hassan Al-Asfahani, Sadiq Al-Shirazi, Al-Barujardi, Hussein Kashif Al-Ghatta', Muhsin Al-Hakim, and Al-Khoei) that calls for a distinct seperation of state and religion and an utter contempt for the notion of Wilayet Al-Faqih (the rule of the jurisprudent) that was preached by Khomeini and taken up by the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
So I wish to comfort the sensational media that there will be no power struggles in the Hawza after Sistani's death. There will always be a peaceful consensus on who would be the supreme marji' in Najaf, as it has always been that way for centuries.
Monday, August 09, 2004
TRB FROM WASHINGTON
Ask Not
by Peter Beinart
Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic convention drew rave reviews. So did Bill Clinton's. But my nominee for best oration of the week goes to Senator Joseph Biden. On Thursday night at about eight o'clock--long before the networks began their broadcasts--Biden laid out the most compelling Democratic foreign policy vision I have yet heard. I just wish more of it had found its way into John Kerry's acceptance speech two hours later.
Biden started by correctly naming America's enemy. Unlike Kerry, who mentioned "terrorists," "antiterrorist operations," and "a global war on terror," Biden never mentioned the "T" word. Instead, he spoke of the "death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism." The difference is more than semantic. Terrorism, as commentators have pointed out, is a tactic. Sri Lankan suicide bombers who blow themselves up in the name of Tamil independence are terrorists--but we are not at war with them. If militants in Iraq shoot only at American soldiers and not at civilians, they are not technically terrorists--but they are our enemies nonetheless. Radical Islam is an ideology, and calling it the enemy implies that America is fighting a war not just of national interest, but of ideas. "Radical fundamentalism," Biden said, "will fall to the terrible, swift power of our ideas as well as our swords."
Kerry also lauded American values, saying, "I know the power of our ideals. We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to and not just feared." But, because he hadn't defined the enemy by reference to its ideas, his statement about American principles lacked context and force. A beacon is also a very different metaphor than a sword. Biden said the "death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism ... breached our shores on September 11." Notice the implication: The war against radical Islam began before September 11--in other corners of the globe. Thus, victory requires the United States to play an active role in conflicts within other societies, particularly Muslim ones. Kerry's statement, by contrast, can be read as a call merely for the United States to live out its ideals at home, secure that the world is watching. Indeed, his speech said nothing about promoting democracy in Iraq or anywhere else.
By defining America's war less expansively, Kerry implicitly asked less of the American people. Speaking about Iraq, he said, "We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home." But there's a trade-off between "get[ting] the job done" and "bring[ing] our troops home." Kerry could have said we need more foreign troops in Iraq to buttress the existing American ones--and thus achieve the overall number General Eric Shinseki famously said was necessary to secure the country. Instead, he implied that we need foreign troops to replace American ones. The focus wasn't on America and its allies doing more together; it was on America's allies doing more so America can do less.
A few sentences later, Kerry called for adding "forty thousand active-duty troops"--a proposal for which he deserves credit. But he promised that they would be deployed "not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure." America's troops certainly are overstretched. But, given that Iraq has become (whether it should have or not) the war on terrorism's central front, isn't it odd to declare ahead of time that new American troops won't be sent there? Is easing the strain on America's military really more important than making sure Iraq doesn't fall to theocracy or civil war? By calling for a bigger military and a smaller mission, Kerry sounded like George W. Bush in 2000, who tried to win military votes by offering the Armed Forces more money and less to do.
Contrast that with Biden, who said, "When John Kerry is president, our friends and allies will have no excuse to sit on the sidelines." The word "excuse" is significant: Unlike Kerry, Biden didn't lay all the blame for America's estrangement at our door. He implied that the Europeans have failed to fulfill their responsibilities, too. A Kerry administration, he suggested, would change European behavior not only by being more respectful, but also by asking more, not less, of the United States. Biden said Kerry "will inherit a nation and a world that will require him to ask much of us and our allies."
But it's not clear Kerry sees it that way. Nowhere in his speech did he say that America's war will require great public exertion. When Biden evoked September 11, it was to remember that "Americans stood in bloodlines for hours" and to chastise Bush for not channeling that spirit to say, "It's time for all who are able to do something for America." When Kerry evoked September 11, it was simply to remember how "we came together as one." And, while some Democrats have proposed a draft, or at least some kind of mandatory national service, to harness the post-September 11 spirit, Kerry promised merely to "end the backdoor draft of National Guard and reservists."
He also said this: "We shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America." The implication is that, by rebuilding Iraq, we are robbing the United States; if only we did less overseas, we can have more at home. The firehouse line further suggests the ideological and moral narrowness of the war Kerry intends to fight. After all, if the United States can't afford to fund firehouses in Baghdad, it also can't afford to fund textbooks in Pakistan or Egypt so students there aren't brainwashed in madrassas. Nowhere in Kerry's speech did he say that building security at home means building liberalism abroad--which will require more money and more sacrifice, not less.
At the close of his speech, Kerry asked Americans to imagine "what if" we cure Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. "What if" we provide after-school programs and end discrimination? But he never asked "what if" we help liberate the Middle East--so Muslims can live in freedom and Americans can live in peace. Biden said this generation of Americans "longs to do great things" in the world. But, when it came to the war against radical Islam, Kerry almost implied that great things were not necessary. On Thursday night, he showed the strength to be commander-in-chief. If only he had shown the imagination too.
Peter Beinart is the editor of TNR.
Ask Not
by Peter Beinart
Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic convention drew rave reviews. So did Bill Clinton's. But my nominee for best oration of the week goes to Senator Joseph Biden. On Thursday night at about eight o'clock--long before the networks began their broadcasts--Biden laid out the most compelling Democratic foreign policy vision I have yet heard. I just wish more of it had found its way into John Kerry's acceptance speech two hours later.
Biden started by correctly naming America's enemy. Unlike Kerry, who mentioned "terrorists," "antiterrorist operations," and "a global war on terror," Biden never mentioned the "T" word. Instead, he spoke of the "death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism." The difference is more than semantic. Terrorism, as commentators have pointed out, is a tactic. Sri Lankan suicide bombers who blow themselves up in the name of Tamil independence are terrorists--but we are not at war with them. If militants in Iraq shoot only at American soldiers and not at civilians, they are not technically terrorists--but they are our enemies nonetheless. Radical Islam is an ideology, and calling it the enemy implies that America is fighting a war not just of national interest, but of ideas. "Radical fundamentalism," Biden said, "will fall to the terrible, swift power of our ideas as well as our swords."
Kerry also lauded American values, saying, "I know the power of our ideals. We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to and not just feared." But, because he hadn't defined the enemy by reference to its ideas, his statement about American principles lacked context and force. A beacon is also a very different metaphor than a sword. Biden said the "death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism ... breached our shores on September 11." Notice the implication: The war against radical Islam began before September 11--in other corners of the globe. Thus, victory requires the United States to play an active role in conflicts within other societies, particularly Muslim ones. Kerry's statement, by contrast, can be read as a call merely for the United States to live out its ideals at home, secure that the world is watching. Indeed, his speech said nothing about promoting democracy in Iraq or anywhere else.
By defining America's war less expansively, Kerry implicitly asked less of the American people. Speaking about Iraq, he said, "We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home." But there's a trade-off between "get[ting] the job done" and "bring[ing] our troops home." Kerry could have said we need more foreign troops in Iraq to buttress the existing American ones--and thus achieve the overall number General Eric Shinseki famously said was necessary to secure the country. Instead, he implied that we need foreign troops to replace American ones. The focus wasn't on America and its allies doing more together; it was on America's allies doing more so America can do less.
A few sentences later, Kerry called for adding "forty thousand active-duty troops"--a proposal for which he deserves credit. But he promised that they would be deployed "not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure." America's troops certainly are overstretched. But, given that Iraq has become (whether it should have or not) the war on terrorism's central front, isn't it odd to declare ahead of time that new American troops won't be sent there? Is easing the strain on America's military really more important than making sure Iraq doesn't fall to theocracy or civil war? By calling for a bigger military and a smaller mission, Kerry sounded like George W. Bush in 2000, who tried to win military votes by offering the Armed Forces more money and less to do.
Contrast that with Biden, who said, "When John Kerry is president, our friends and allies will have no excuse to sit on the sidelines." The word "excuse" is significant: Unlike Kerry, Biden didn't lay all the blame for America's estrangement at our door. He implied that the Europeans have failed to fulfill their responsibilities, too. A Kerry administration, he suggested, would change European behavior not only by being more respectful, but also by asking more, not less, of the United States. Biden said Kerry "will inherit a nation and a world that will require him to ask much of us and our allies."
But it's not clear Kerry sees it that way. Nowhere in his speech did he say that America's war will require great public exertion. When Biden evoked September 11, it was to remember that "Americans stood in bloodlines for hours" and to chastise Bush for not channeling that spirit to say, "It's time for all who are able to do something for America." When Kerry evoked September 11, it was simply to remember how "we came together as one." And, while some Democrats have proposed a draft, or at least some kind of mandatory national service, to harness the post-September 11 spirit, Kerry promised merely to "end the backdoor draft of National Guard and reservists."
He also said this: "We shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America." The implication is that, by rebuilding Iraq, we are robbing the United States; if only we did less overseas, we can have more at home. The firehouse line further suggests the ideological and moral narrowness of the war Kerry intends to fight. After all, if the United States can't afford to fund firehouses in Baghdad, it also can't afford to fund textbooks in Pakistan or Egypt so students there aren't brainwashed in madrassas. Nowhere in Kerry's speech did he say that building security at home means building liberalism abroad--which will require more money and more sacrifice, not less.
At the close of his speech, Kerry asked Americans to imagine "what if" we cure Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. "What if" we provide after-school programs and end discrimination? But he never asked "what if" we help liberate the Middle East--so Muslims can live in freedom and Americans can live in peace. Biden said this generation of Americans "longs to do great things" in the world. But, when it came to the war against radical Islam, Kerry almost implied that great things were not necessary. On Thursday night, he showed the strength to be commander-in-chief. If only he had shown the imagination too.
Peter Beinart is the editor of TNR.
Iran: The Next Crisis
By Fareed Zakaria
Tuesday, August 10, 2004; Page A19
Who could have imagined that alliance management would be a hot election issue? But it is. John Kerry's repeated pledge to restore relations with U.S. allies has struck a chord. The trouble is, if he is elected president, Kerry is going to find that promise hard to keep -- at least with America's allies in Europe. Most of them would be delighted to see Kerry win, but that doesn't mean they will be more cooperative on policy issues. Terrorism is understandably on everyone's mind, but there is yet another growing danger over the horizon. Early into a Kerry administration, we could see a familiar sight -- a transatlantic crisis -- except this time it wouldn't be over Iraq but Iran.
The threat to the United States from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, if they ever existed, is in the past. Iran, on the other hand, is the problem of the future. Over the past two years, thanks to tips from Iranian opposition groups and investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has become clear that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. In the words of the agency, Iran has "a practically complete front-end of a nuclear fuel cycle," which leads most experts to believe it is two to three years away from having a nuclear bomb.
European countries were as worried by this development as Washington, and because the United States has no relations with Iran, Europe stepped in last fall and negotiated a deal with Tehran. It was an excellent agreement, under which Iran pledged to stop developing fissile material (the core ingredient of a nuclear bomb) and to keep its nuclear program transparent. The only problem is, Iran has recently announced that it isn't going to abide by the deal. As the IAEA's investigation became more serious, Tehran became more secretive. One month ago the agency condemned Iran for its failure to cooperate. Tehran responded by announcing that it would resume work in prohibited areas.
That's where things stand, with the clock ticking fast. If Iran were to go nuclear, it would have dramatic effects. It would place nuclear materials in the hands of a radical regime that has ties to unsavory groups. It would signal to other countries that it's possible to break the nuclear taboo. And it would revolutionize the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Egypt would feel threatened by Iran's bomb and would start their own search for nuclear technology. (Saudi Arabia probably could not make a bomb but it could certainly buy necessary technology from a country such as Pakistan. In fact, we don't really know all of the buyers who patronized Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear supermarket. It's quite possible Saudi Arabia already has a few elements of such a program.) And then there is Israel, which has long perceived Iran as its greatest threat. It is unlikely to sit passively while Iran develops a nuclear bomb. The powerful Iranian politician Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has publicly speculated about a nuclear exchange with Israel. If Iran's program went forward, at some point Israel would almost certainly try to destroy it with airstrikes, as it did on Iraq's reactor in Osirak. Such an action would, of course, create a massive political crisis in the region.
In the face of these stark dangers, Europe seems remarkably passive. Having burst into action last fall, it does not seem to know what to do now that Iran has rebuffed its efforts. It is urging negotiations again, which is fine. But what will it tell Iran in these negotiations? What is the threat that it is willing to wield?
Last month the Brookings Institution conducted a scenario with mostly former American and European officials. In it, Iran actually acquires fissile material. Even facing the imminent production of a nuclear bomb, Europeans were unwilling to take any robust measures, such as the use of force or tough sanctions. James Steinberg, a senior Clinton administration official who organized this workshop, said that he was "deeply frustrated by European attitudes." Madeleine Albright, who regularly convenes a discussion group of former foreign ministers, said that on this topic, "Europeans say they understand the threat but then act as if the real problem is not Iran but the United States."
U.S. policy toward Iran is hardly blameless. Washington refuses even to consider the possibility of direct talks with Iran, let alone actual relations. Europeans could present Washington with a plan. They would go along with a bigger stick if Washington would throw in a bigger carrot: direct engagement with Tehran. This is something Tehran has long sought, and it could be offered in return for renouncing its nuclear ambitions.
But for any of this to happen, Europe must be willing to play an active, assertive role. It must stop viewing itself merely as a critic of U.S. policy and instead see itself as a partner, jointly acting to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation. And it should do this not as a favor to John Kerry but as a responsibility to its own citizens and those of the world.
comments@fareedzakaria.com
By Fareed Zakaria
Tuesday, August 10, 2004; Page A19
Who could have imagined that alliance management would be a hot election issue? But it is. John Kerry's repeated pledge to restore relations with U.S. allies has struck a chord. The trouble is, if he is elected president, Kerry is going to find that promise hard to keep -- at least with America's allies in Europe. Most of them would be delighted to see Kerry win, but that doesn't mean they will be more cooperative on policy issues. Terrorism is understandably on everyone's mind, but there is yet another growing danger over the horizon. Early into a Kerry administration, we could see a familiar sight -- a transatlantic crisis -- except this time it wouldn't be over Iraq but Iran.
The threat to the United States from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, if they ever existed, is in the past. Iran, on the other hand, is the problem of the future. Over the past two years, thanks to tips from Iranian opposition groups and investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has become clear that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. In the words of the agency, Iran has "a practically complete front-end of a nuclear fuel cycle," which leads most experts to believe it is two to three years away from having a nuclear bomb.
European countries were as worried by this development as Washington, and because the United States has no relations with Iran, Europe stepped in last fall and negotiated a deal with Tehran. It was an excellent agreement, under which Iran pledged to stop developing fissile material (the core ingredient of a nuclear bomb) and to keep its nuclear program transparent. The only problem is, Iran has recently announced that it isn't going to abide by the deal. As the IAEA's investigation became more serious, Tehran became more secretive. One month ago the agency condemned Iran for its failure to cooperate. Tehran responded by announcing that it would resume work in prohibited areas.
That's where things stand, with the clock ticking fast. If Iran were to go nuclear, it would have dramatic effects. It would place nuclear materials in the hands of a radical regime that has ties to unsavory groups. It would signal to other countries that it's possible to break the nuclear taboo. And it would revolutionize the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Egypt would feel threatened by Iran's bomb and would start their own search for nuclear technology. (Saudi Arabia probably could not make a bomb but it could certainly buy necessary technology from a country such as Pakistan. In fact, we don't really know all of the buyers who patronized Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear supermarket. It's quite possible Saudi Arabia already has a few elements of such a program.) And then there is Israel, which has long perceived Iran as its greatest threat. It is unlikely to sit passively while Iran develops a nuclear bomb. The powerful Iranian politician Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has publicly speculated about a nuclear exchange with Israel. If Iran's program went forward, at some point Israel would almost certainly try to destroy it with airstrikes, as it did on Iraq's reactor in Osirak. Such an action would, of course, create a massive political crisis in the region.
In the face of these stark dangers, Europe seems remarkably passive. Having burst into action last fall, it does not seem to know what to do now that Iran has rebuffed its efforts. It is urging negotiations again, which is fine. But what will it tell Iran in these negotiations? What is the threat that it is willing to wield?
Last month the Brookings Institution conducted a scenario with mostly former American and European officials. In it, Iran actually acquires fissile material. Even facing the imminent production of a nuclear bomb, Europeans were unwilling to take any robust measures, such as the use of force or tough sanctions. James Steinberg, a senior Clinton administration official who organized this workshop, said that he was "deeply frustrated by European attitudes." Madeleine Albright, who regularly convenes a discussion group of former foreign ministers, said that on this topic, "Europeans say they understand the threat but then act as if the real problem is not Iran but the United States."
U.S. policy toward Iran is hardly blameless. Washington refuses even to consider the possibility of direct talks with Iran, let alone actual relations. Europeans could present Washington with a plan. They would go along with a bigger stick if Washington would throw in a bigger carrot: direct engagement with Tehran. This is something Tehran has long sought, and it could be offered in return for renouncing its nuclear ambitions.
But for any of this to happen, Europe must be willing to play an active, assertive role. It must stop viewing itself merely as a critic of U.S. policy and instead see itself as a partner, jointly acting to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation. And it should do this not as a favor to John Kerry but as a responsibility to its own citizens and those of the world.
comments@fareedzakaria.com
Well, aren't we all surprised!
Allies Not in Formation on Kerry's Troops Plan
Nations have a hard time supporting his proposal to use their soldiers to fill out the force in Iraq.
By Paul Richter and Maria L. La Ganga
LA Times Staff Writers
August 9, 2004
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has staked much of his campaign on a proposal he hopes will convince voters that he can extricate the United States from Iraq more quickly and at less cost than President Bush.
But Kerry's plan, which promises to effectively shift much of the Iraq war burden from America to its allies, so far is failing to receive the international support the proposal must have to succeed.
Kerry in recent appearances and interviews has been intensifying his effort to spotlight what he sees as the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq — especially the failure to broaden international involvement — as a fundamental difference between the two candidates. But Kerry's proposals depend on changing the minds of foreign leaders who do not want to defy their electorates by sending forces into what many consider to be a U.S.-made mess.
"I understand why John Kerry is making proposals of this kind, but there is a lack of realism in them," Menzies Campbell, a British lawmaker who is a spokesman on defense issues for the Liberal Democratic Party, said in a typical comment.
Many allied countries may welcome a new team in Washington after years of friction with the Bush administration. But foreign leaders are making it clear they don't want to add enough of their own troops to allow U.S. forces to scale back to a minority share in Iraq, as Kerry has proposed.
Allies say they are ready to consider further financial aid and other help for the fragile new Iraqi government. But some officials overseas already are fretting about Kerry's talk of burden-shifting.
"Some Europeans are rather concerned that Mr. Kerry might have expectations for relief [from abroad] that are going to be hard to meet," said one senior European diplomat in a statement echoed in several capitals.
In an interview with The Times last week, Kerry said that by building up international support, it would be a "reasonable goal" to replace most U.S. troops in Iraq with foreign forces within his first term. There are now about 140,000 U.S. troops stationed there, or 88% of a total international force of about 160,000.
In the last several days, Kerry has begun arguing that he could substantially reduce the number of U.S. troops within the first six months of a Kerry administration. In an interview with National Public Radio on Friday, Kerry said: "I believe that within a year from now, we could significantly reduce American forces in Iraq, and that's my plan."
The proposal could be accomplished by increasing the number of foreign troops and boosting the size of the Iraqi security force, Kerry aides say.
Yet some key countries have already ruled out providing troops, and others are badly strained from the deployments they have already made.
The French and German governments have made clear that sending troops is out of the question. British officials have made no such categorical statement, but they have expressed concern that their troops are overstretched.
Although Japan has supplied a 550-member noncombat force as a symbol of its international commitment, analysts there see little chance the nation would agree to send more.
Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Andrei Denisov, ruled out a commitment of troops. "We are not going to send anybody there, and that's all there is to say," Denisov said.
"From the major European countries, there's simply not a lot of available troops out there, for both practical and political reasons," said Christopher Makins, president of the Atlantic Council of the United States, which supports U.S. engagement abroad.
Many allied countries have a limited number of troops suitable for the Iraq mission, and most of those are already deployed on other missions, including in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Africa, Makins said.
Dana Allin of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said, "I think there's no question, in general, you'll find it easier to get cooperation from allies if there is a new [U.S.] administration." But Allin added that if new troops were to be sent to Iraq "it's unclear where they would come from."
Kerry has at times said he would particularly like to bring in troops from Arab countries. But diplomats, including those from Arab nations, say they consider the scenario unlikely. The Iraqi interim government has for months excluded the possibility of any peacekeeping troops coming from immediate neighbors, in part because the Iraqi people would be suspicious of neighbors' intentions.
The recent collapse of a Saudi proposal to bring in peacekeeping troops from other Arab and Muslim countries also indicates the long odds against the idea.
Senior Iraqi officials told U.S. officials this summer that they opposed the idea of bringing in additional troops from any foreign country.
Campbell, the British lawmaker, added that Kerry "has to overcome the very considerable barrier of the fact that he himself voted for military action in support of President Bush."
Analysts said, moreover, that if the United States was able to reduce its military by substantial numbers in Iraq, at least one or two major nations — such as France or Britain — would have to accept a lead role.
Kerry's proposal comes at a time when the Bush administration is struggling to convince about 30 countries to keep their troops in Iraq. Late last month, Ukraine announced that it would start negotiations to pull out some of its 1,650 troops in Iraq, the fourth-largest non-U.S. contingent.
Kerry, however, insists that he can gather international support by showing leadership and by giving other countries decision-making authority they have not had before now.
But the Massachusetts senator has repeatedly declined to say how he would find the added support, saying it is unwise to get into the details of diplomacy. "No future president should ever lay this out on the table," he has said.
A senior foreign policy advisor to Kerry, who asked to remain unidentified, said that campaign officials knew through foreign contacts that other governments would cooperate.
"There are enough indications through enough channels that we wouldn't be saying it if we didn't think we could do it," the advisor said.
A spokesman for the Bush campaign scoffed at the Democrats' claim to have such support. Steve Schmidt recalled the highly publicized squabble early in the campaign in which Kerry claimed the support of unspecified foreign leaders.
"He won't name the foreign leaders," Schmidt said. "He won't disclose the conversations."
Kerry has proposed two other measures he has said would help draw support — convening an international conference on Iraq and naming through international consultations a "high commissioner," with U.N. backing, to give other countries more say.
Several diplomats said allies would probably welcome signals of new interest in consultation. But they said that, with sovereignty now assumed by an interim Iraqi government, there was no longer a demand for an international authority that could give the occupation a legitimacy that was missing under U.S. military control.
"Nine months or a year ago, this could have made a difference," said the senior European diplomat. "Now, it's too late."
At this point, he said, many of the allies think it would be better to concentrate on providing help directly to the new Iraqi government to improve its chances of creating a stable democracy.
Makins, of the Atlantic Council, said he thought the Kerry proposal for a conference and joint leadership would have limited value in drawing allies into a new partnership.
"I don't think it would be a deal maker, as far as European participation," he said. "I think major governments are looking for ways to build up the Iraqi government and constitutional process."
Another Kerry proposal is to rebuild relationships with foreign governments by permitting them to bid for U.S. reconstruction contracts. Under Bush, companies from countries that didn't take part in the Iraq war coalition were excluded from bidding for prime contracts.
But now, the administration has announced it will allow all comers to bid for a new tranche of contracts in September. Yet some of the European countries that were excluded from the earlier rounds have said for months that their industries never clamored for permission to seek such contracts.
Leaders from allied countries emphasized that they would be ready to reconsider financial aid and other assistance to Iraq under either a Kerry or Bush administration. Some said that they already had stepped up financial assistance to Iraq, even as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance agreed to Iraqi requests to begin training local security forces.
As they assess Kerry's proposal, foreign leaders also are trying to decipher where he stands philosophically on Iraq. Similar questions have followed Kerry in his campaign at home.
Kerry, even when he supported the congressional resolution in October 2002 that authorized the war, has been consistent in pressing for more international backing for U.S. policies toward Iraq and reconstruction efforts there.
"The international community's support will be critical because we will not be able to rebuild Iraq single-handedly," Kerry said in an October 2002 Senate speech in which he outlined steps he thought Bush should take. "We will lack the credibility and the expertise and the capacity."
In an address at UCLA in late February, 16 months later, Kerry said, "It is time to return to the United Nations and return America to the community of nations and share both authority and responsibility in Iraq."
Addressing the Democratic National Convention on July 29, Kerry echoed the same themes. "I know what we have to do in Iraq," he told delegates. "We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers and reduce the risk to American soldiers."
But while he has criticized the Bush administration's competence, he has not challenged the fundamentals of its policy, nor the path it is following toward Iraq's own upcoming elections.
Still, polls suggest that many Europeans and Asians would prefer a new administration. A recent survey found 77% of Germans prefer Kerry, to 10% for Bush; another found that 13% of Russians "like" Bush as a politician, while 60% dislike him.
There is a widespread public expectation in Europe — despite what U.S. polls show — that Bush will be ousted in November because of the troubled course of the Iraq war, analysts said.
But many European diplomats say they are coming to the conclusion that Bush and Kerry are close on key international issues and that there would be substantial continuity between the administrations.
Kerry, like Bush, insists that U.S. troops should not be tried before the International Criminal Court, the multinational tribunal that has been a contentious subject between Europe and the United States. The U.S. has not ratified creation of the court.
On another issue that divides the United States and Europe, Kerry has signaled that he would track the Bush administration on dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although he has said he would more aggressively seek a solution.
One German newspaper, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, suggested Europeans were in for a rude awakening if Kerry becomes president. Under the headline "The Big Kerry Illusion," the newspaper said Kerry would diverge from Bush, but any hope that he would more fully embrace the "global village" was "wishful thinking that will get a cold shower."
By contrast, there is a widespread belief in Russia that a Kerry win would launch a new era of U.S.-European goodwill — a prospect Russian leaders view with alarm.
The Russian government is happy with tensions between Bush and Europe, which gives Moscow an opening to build its own relations with European governments and distracts world attention from its own difficulties, analysts said.
"The Kremlin feels very comfortable with the notion that Bush is playing the enfant terrible in the world arena, because of his Middle East policy, and thus he keeps distracting the world from, for example, problems in Russia," said Stanislav Belkovsky, general director of the National Strategy Council, a think tank considered close to Russian security services. "The Kremlin is not at all interested in the Democrats' victory in the presidential polls."
Allies Not in Formation on Kerry's Troops Plan
Nations have a hard time supporting his proposal to use their soldiers to fill out the force in Iraq.
By Paul Richter and Maria L. La Ganga
LA Times Staff Writers
August 9, 2004
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has staked much of his campaign on a proposal he hopes will convince voters that he can extricate the United States from Iraq more quickly and at less cost than President Bush.
But Kerry's plan, which promises to effectively shift much of the Iraq war burden from America to its allies, so far is failing to receive the international support the proposal must have to succeed.
Kerry in recent appearances and interviews has been intensifying his effort to spotlight what he sees as the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq — especially the failure to broaden international involvement — as a fundamental difference between the two candidates. But Kerry's proposals depend on changing the minds of foreign leaders who do not want to defy their electorates by sending forces into what many consider to be a U.S.-made mess.
"I understand why John Kerry is making proposals of this kind, but there is a lack of realism in them," Menzies Campbell, a British lawmaker who is a spokesman on defense issues for the Liberal Democratic Party, said in a typical comment.
Many allied countries may welcome a new team in Washington after years of friction with the Bush administration. But foreign leaders are making it clear they don't want to add enough of their own troops to allow U.S. forces to scale back to a minority share in Iraq, as Kerry has proposed.
Allies say they are ready to consider further financial aid and other help for the fragile new Iraqi government. But some officials overseas already are fretting about Kerry's talk of burden-shifting.
"Some Europeans are rather concerned that Mr. Kerry might have expectations for relief [from abroad] that are going to be hard to meet," said one senior European diplomat in a statement echoed in several capitals.
In an interview with The Times last week, Kerry said that by building up international support, it would be a "reasonable goal" to replace most U.S. troops in Iraq with foreign forces within his first term. There are now about 140,000 U.S. troops stationed there, or 88% of a total international force of about 160,000.
In the last several days, Kerry has begun arguing that he could substantially reduce the number of U.S. troops within the first six months of a Kerry administration. In an interview with National Public Radio on Friday, Kerry said: "I believe that within a year from now, we could significantly reduce American forces in Iraq, and that's my plan."
The proposal could be accomplished by increasing the number of foreign troops and boosting the size of the Iraqi security force, Kerry aides say.
Yet some key countries have already ruled out providing troops, and others are badly strained from the deployments they have already made.
The French and German governments have made clear that sending troops is out of the question. British officials have made no such categorical statement, but they have expressed concern that their troops are overstretched.
Although Japan has supplied a 550-member noncombat force as a symbol of its international commitment, analysts there see little chance the nation would agree to send more.
Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Andrei Denisov, ruled out a commitment of troops. "We are not going to send anybody there, and that's all there is to say," Denisov said.
"From the major European countries, there's simply not a lot of available troops out there, for both practical and political reasons," said Christopher Makins, president of the Atlantic Council of the United States, which supports U.S. engagement abroad.
Many allied countries have a limited number of troops suitable for the Iraq mission, and most of those are already deployed on other missions, including in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Africa, Makins said.
Dana Allin of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said, "I think there's no question, in general, you'll find it easier to get cooperation from allies if there is a new [U.S.] administration." But Allin added that if new troops were to be sent to Iraq "it's unclear where they would come from."
Kerry has at times said he would particularly like to bring in troops from Arab countries. But diplomats, including those from Arab nations, say they consider the scenario unlikely. The Iraqi interim government has for months excluded the possibility of any peacekeeping troops coming from immediate neighbors, in part because the Iraqi people would be suspicious of neighbors' intentions.
The recent collapse of a Saudi proposal to bring in peacekeeping troops from other Arab and Muslim countries also indicates the long odds against the idea.
Senior Iraqi officials told U.S. officials this summer that they opposed the idea of bringing in additional troops from any foreign country.
Campbell, the British lawmaker, added that Kerry "has to overcome the very considerable barrier of the fact that he himself voted for military action in support of President Bush."
Analysts said, moreover, that if the United States was able to reduce its military by substantial numbers in Iraq, at least one or two major nations — such as France or Britain — would have to accept a lead role.
Kerry's proposal comes at a time when the Bush administration is struggling to convince about 30 countries to keep their troops in Iraq. Late last month, Ukraine announced that it would start negotiations to pull out some of its 1,650 troops in Iraq, the fourth-largest non-U.S. contingent.
Kerry, however, insists that he can gather international support by showing leadership and by giving other countries decision-making authority they have not had before now.
But the Massachusetts senator has repeatedly declined to say how he would find the added support, saying it is unwise to get into the details of diplomacy. "No future president should ever lay this out on the table," he has said.
A senior foreign policy advisor to Kerry, who asked to remain unidentified, said that campaign officials knew through foreign contacts that other governments would cooperate.
"There are enough indications through enough channels that we wouldn't be saying it if we didn't think we could do it," the advisor said.
A spokesman for the Bush campaign scoffed at the Democrats' claim to have such support. Steve Schmidt recalled the highly publicized squabble early in the campaign in which Kerry claimed the support of unspecified foreign leaders.
"He won't name the foreign leaders," Schmidt said. "He won't disclose the conversations."
Kerry has proposed two other measures he has said would help draw support — convening an international conference on Iraq and naming through international consultations a "high commissioner," with U.N. backing, to give other countries more say.
Several diplomats said allies would probably welcome signals of new interest in consultation. But they said that, with sovereignty now assumed by an interim Iraqi government, there was no longer a demand for an international authority that could give the occupation a legitimacy that was missing under U.S. military control.
"Nine months or a year ago, this could have made a difference," said the senior European diplomat. "Now, it's too late."
At this point, he said, many of the allies think it would be better to concentrate on providing help directly to the new Iraqi government to improve its chances of creating a stable democracy.
Makins, of the Atlantic Council, said he thought the Kerry proposal for a conference and joint leadership would have limited value in drawing allies into a new partnership.
"I don't think it would be a deal maker, as far as European participation," he said. "I think major governments are looking for ways to build up the Iraqi government and constitutional process."
Another Kerry proposal is to rebuild relationships with foreign governments by permitting them to bid for U.S. reconstruction contracts. Under Bush, companies from countries that didn't take part in the Iraq war coalition were excluded from bidding for prime contracts.
But now, the administration has announced it will allow all comers to bid for a new tranche of contracts in September. Yet some of the European countries that were excluded from the earlier rounds have said for months that their industries never clamored for permission to seek such contracts.
Leaders from allied countries emphasized that they would be ready to reconsider financial aid and other assistance to Iraq under either a Kerry or Bush administration. Some said that they already had stepped up financial assistance to Iraq, even as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance agreed to Iraqi requests to begin training local security forces.
As they assess Kerry's proposal, foreign leaders also are trying to decipher where he stands philosophically on Iraq. Similar questions have followed Kerry in his campaign at home.
Kerry, even when he supported the congressional resolution in October 2002 that authorized the war, has been consistent in pressing for more international backing for U.S. policies toward Iraq and reconstruction efforts there.
"The international community's support will be critical because we will not be able to rebuild Iraq single-handedly," Kerry said in an October 2002 Senate speech in which he outlined steps he thought Bush should take. "We will lack the credibility and the expertise and the capacity."
In an address at UCLA in late February, 16 months later, Kerry said, "It is time to return to the United Nations and return America to the community of nations and share both authority and responsibility in Iraq."
Addressing the Democratic National Convention on July 29, Kerry echoed the same themes. "I know what we have to do in Iraq," he told delegates. "We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers and reduce the risk to American soldiers."
But while he has criticized the Bush administration's competence, he has not challenged the fundamentals of its policy, nor the path it is following toward Iraq's own upcoming elections.
Still, polls suggest that many Europeans and Asians would prefer a new administration. A recent survey found 77% of Germans prefer Kerry, to 10% for Bush; another found that 13% of Russians "like" Bush as a politician, while 60% dislike him.
There is a widespread public expectation in Europe — despite what U.S. polls show — that Bush will be ousted in November because of the troubled course of the Iraq war, analysts said.
But many European diplomats say they are coming to the conclusion that Bush and Kerry are close on key international issues and that there would be substantial continuity between the administrations.
Kerry, like Bush, insists that U.S. troops should not be tried before the International Criminal Court, the multinational tribunal that has been a contentious subject between Europe and the United States. The U.S. has not ratified creation of the court.
On another issue that divides the United States and Europe, Kerry has signaled that he would track the Bush administration on dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although he has said he would more aggressively seek a solution.
One German newspaper, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, suggested Europeans were in for a rude awakening if Kerry becomes president. Under the headline "The Big Kerry Illusion," the newspaper said Kerry would diverge from Bush, but any hope that he would more fully embrace the "global village" was "wishful thinking that will get a cold shower."
By contrast, there is a widespread belief in Russia that a Kerry win would launch a new era of U.S.-European goodwill — a prospect Russian leaders view with alarm.
The Russian government is happy with tensions between Bush and Europe, which gives Moscow an opening to build its own relations with European governments and distracts world attention from its own difficulties, analysts said.
"The Kremlin feels very comfortable with the notion that Bush is playing the enfant terrible in the world arena, because of his Middle East policy, and thus he keeps distracting the world from, for example, problems in Russia," said Stanislav Belkovsky, general director of the National Strategy Council, a think tank considered close to Russian security services. "The Kremlin is not at all interested in the Democrats' victory in the presidential polls."
Safe Cracking
The silliness of security alerts.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Friday, Aug. 6, 2004, at 8:50 AM PT
I was going to start by saying that the cretinization of public discourse on "security" continues to gather pace, but then I stopped myself. How can cretinization gather pace? Presumably, cretinization is a slowing-down. Anyway, the whole argument, and the whole coverage of it, continues to get even more cowardly and stupid.
It doesn't really matter whether the information about potential assaults on financial institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., is or was "old" or "new." As the "Presidential Daily Brief" of August 2001, now so celebrated in song and legend, chose to phrase it: "Bin Laden associates surveilled our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997." The actual bombings occurred in 1998. So it takes a good deal of optimism to regard any plausible warning or advice as "old news." (Indeed, isn't the term "old news," along with "open-faced sandwich" or the expression "alone together," due for some kind of condemnation as oxymoronic?) On a lesser note, an administration that has recently undergone such hard pounding for "ignoring warnings" will obviously prefer to adopt the policy of Mark Twain's celebrated cat, which once jumped up to sit on a hot stove and would never afterward sit on a cold one.
But what possible good can it do, on the receipt of such "specific information," to put armed men on the streets and in the subways? Assuming as we must that such high-profile attacks would be conducted by suicide-killers, in what respect do more "visible" measures make any difference, except to alert the potential perpetrators? Usually, the intelligence "community" prefers not to disclose what it knows, lest it tip people off as to how it has found out. Where's the reason, apart from PR, to abandon that useful principle in this case? Wouldn't you rather have the counterterrorism team where you couldn't see it, and nor could the perps? But then, where's the political "bounce" in that?
One consequence of such clumsiness is to license the sinister rumor of a deliberately alarmist political agenda. This fourth-rate paranoia even made it onto the editorial page of the New York Times a few days ago, with Paul Krugman echoing an article from the New Republic that claimed an al-Qaida suspect would be held until his arrest could take away the spotlight from the Democratic Convention. (Quick—can you name the suspect? But then again—what can you remember about the convention? The two scintillating events seem to have canceled each other out.) Krugman has already defended Michael Moore's right to lie for a good cause, but this is taking emulation a little far.
The problem, as it is so often, is with public opinion itself. For some reason, we are all assumed to be demanding assurances. (We are also supposed to want a "memorial" in New York, for a war that has barely started yet, and to agree that random families of random victims should receive public money and also have more say in the deliberations on policy. Why is this? Who demanded it?) Opinion polls fatuously inquire which candidate's program will "make America safer."
You can see the consequences of this idiocy at any airport, any day. The last time I flew, I had to show my driver's license, and my boarding pass, three times. This tactic handily eliminates all those hijackers who have ever tried to board a plane without ID or without bothering to buy a ticket. (At my hometown airport of Washington Dulles, as a recent video has shown, three hijackers who boarded on Sept. 11 had taken the usual precaution of having tickets and ID but had not bothered to change their names from the ones on the FBI "terrorism watch-list.") The whole thing is done largely in order to create an impression of security, and the worst of it is watching your fellow passengers thanking those who pointlessly pat them down and who incidentally make sure that if there is a hijacker aboard, you have been as far as possible robbed of anything with which to defend yourself.
However, it's not very probable that the jihadists will use that precise tactic again, so an immense amount of expensive effort is now being deployed in deliberately looking the wrong way. Whereas, to search every train and ship passenger and every bridge-and-tunnel user would be, as we know, to bring our commerce and society to a halt and save the murderers the trouble of doing so. Meanwhile, the administration is giving a gigantic hostage to fortune in claiming that its policies at home and abroad are "making America safer." It will take only one atrocity to make that boast seem worse than hollow, and this in turn will tempt many liberals and Democrats into demagogy. ("They couldn't make you safer, but I can. … It's time to bring our boys home.") It's difficult to imagine a state of greater vulnerability, both physically and morally, and both at home and overseas. We can bring "our" boys home, but "their" soldiers are already here and in place, and training, and waiting. There will be further outrages and slaughters, all across this country and Europe, as there already are in the countries of Islamic civilization, and the crucial thing will be how we respond, not how we "predict" what is already certain or rehearse our whinings and complaints for when the blow falls.
The only assurance that one can decently demand of the administration and of Congress is the assurance that we are actually at war and that all measures are being taken to achieve victory. To couple this with the demand for personal safety is surely to be self-evidently absurd, not to say pathetic. Just as you don't have to go to Afghanistan or Iraq to be in danger from Islamist bombs and bullets, so you don't have to go there in order to demonstrate a little fortitude. "Safe sex" may now be a platitude, but "safe war" would be the silliest oxymoron of the whole lot.
The silliness of security alerts.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Friday, Aug. 6, 2004, at 8:50 AM PT
I was going to start by saying that the cretinization of public discourse on "security" continues to gather pace, but then I stopped myself. How can cretinization gather pace? Presumably, cretinization is a slowing-down. Anyway, the whole argument, and the whole coverage of it, continues to get even more cowardly and stupid.
It doesn't really matter whether the information about potential assaults on financial institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., is or was "old" or "new." As the "Presidential Daily Brief" of August 2001, now so celebrated in song and legend, chose to phrase it: "Bin Laden associates surveilled our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997." The actual bombings occurred in 1998. So it takes a good deal of optimism to regard any plausible warning or advice as "old news." (Indeed, isn't the term "old news," along with "open-faced sandwich" or the expression "alone together," due for some kind of condemnation as oxymoronic?) On a lesser note, an administration that has recently undergone such hard pounding for "ignoring warnings" will obviously prefer to adopt the policy of Mark Twain's celebrated cat, which once jumped up to sit on a hot stove and would never afterward sit on a cold one.
But what possible good can it do, on the receipt of such "specific information," to put armed men on the streets and in the subways? Assuming as we must that such high-profile attacks would be conducted by suicide-killers, in what respect do more "visible" measures make any difference, except to alert the potential perpetrators? Usually, the intelligence "community" prefers not to disclose what it knows, lest it tip people off as to how it has found out. Where's the reason, apart from PR, to abandon that useful principle in this case? Wouldn't you rather have the counterterrorism team where you couldn't see it, and nor could the perps? But then, where's the political "bounce" in that?
One consequence of such clumsiness is to license the sinister rumor of a deliberately alarmist political agenda. This fourth-rate paranoia even made it onto the editorial page of the New York Times a few days ago, with Paul Krugman echoing an article from the New Republic that claimed an al-Qaida suspect would be held until his arrest could take away the spotlight from the Democratic Convention. (Quick—can you name the suspect? But then again—what can you remember about the convention? The two scintillating events seem to have canceled each other out.) Krugman has already defended Michael Moore's right to lie for a good cause, but this is taking emulation a little far.
The problem, as it is so often, is with public opinion itself. For some reason, we are all assumed to be demanding assurances. (We are also supposed to want a "memorial" in New York, for a war that has barely started yet, and to agree that random families of random victims should receive public money and also have more say in the deliberations on policy. Why is this? Who demanded it?) Opinion polls fatuously inquire which candidate's program will "make America safer."
You can see the consequences of this idiocy at any airport, any day. The last time I flew, I had to show my driver's license, and my boarding pass, three times. This tactic handily eliminates all those hijackers who have ever tried to board a plane without ID or without bothering to buy a ticket. (At my hometown airport of Washington Dulles, as a recent video has shown, three hijackers who boarded on Sept. 11 had taken the usual precaution of having tickets and ID but had not bothered to change their names from the ones on the FBI "terrorism watch-list.") The whole thing is done largely in order to create an impression of security, and the worst of it is watching your fellow passengers thanking those who pointlessly pat them down and who incidentally make sure that if there is a hijacker aboard, you have been as far as possible robbed of anything with which to defend yourself.
However, it's not very probable that the jihadists will use that precise tactic again, so an immense amount of expensive effort is now being deployed in deliberately looking the wrong way. Whereas, to search every train and ship passenger and every bridge-and-tunnel user would be, as we know, to bring our commerce and society to a halt and save the murderers the trouble of doing so. Meanwhile, the administration is giving a gigantic hostage to fortune in claiming that its policies at home and abroad are "making America safer." It will take only one atrocity to make that boast seem worse than hollow, and this in turn will tempt many liberals and Democrats into demagogy. ("They couldn't make you safer, but I can. … It's time to bring our boys home.") It's difficult to imagine a state of greater vulnerability, both physically and morally, and both at home and overseas. We can bring "our" boys home, but "their" soldiers are already here and in place, and training, and waiting. There will be further outrages and slaughters, all across this country and Europe, as there already are in the countries of Islamic civilization, and the crucial thing will be how we respond, not how we "predict" what is already certain or rehearse our whinings and complaints for when the blow falls.
The only assurance that one can decently demand of the administration and of Congress is the assurance that we are actually at war and that all measures are being taken to achieve victory. To couple this with the demand for personal safety is surely to be self-evidently absurd, not to say pathetic. Just as you don't have to go to Afghanistan or Iraq to be in danger from Islamist bombs and bullets, so you don't have to go there in order to demonstrate a little fortitude. "Safe sex" may now be a platitude, but "safe war" would be the silliest oxymoron of the whole lot.
Sunday, August 08, 2004
A New Afghan Policy
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, August 8, 2004;
Using American troops to strike at Afghanistan's booming opium trade has not been part of the war on terrorism or the U.S. election-year debate. It is time to change both that strategy and that political context.
The White House is near the conclusion of a major policy review on Afghanistan that is likely to expand the role of U.S. forces -- who have focused on hunting down al Qaeda and Taliban remnants -- and commit them to supporting new efforts by President Hamid Karzai to uproot drug lords.
That is not as easy a decision as it may seem. The Pentagon's long-standing reluctance to get deeply involved in counter-narcotics missions abroad has a sound basis. Soldiers do not have the tools and skills to excel at law enforcement or agrarian reform, especially when the political corruption and greed that surround the drug trade make it difficult to tell friend from foe or peasant from profiteer.
This is an acute problem in Afghanistan, where warlords who helped Washington bring down the Taliban and have nominally accepted Karzai as their national leader are also involved in the drug trade, which feeds the heroin habits of Germany, Britain and other European countries while enriching traffickers in Pakistan, Iran and Russia.
But the changing nature of the global battlefield and specific events in Afghanistan require a new approach there. Much more is involved in the decisions that President Bush will soon make than Karzai's needs for more support to establish his authority on the ground -- as important as those needs are.
Bush's decisions will help redefine who the enemy is in the greater Middle East, what tasks Europe and America can realistically share in trying to calm that region, and perhaps the nature of counterinsurgency in the 21st century.
Those are big ideas, worthy of big discussions. Defining the way forward in Afghanistan and in Iraq as part of a regional strategy has to be at least as urgent for the presidential candidates as slamming each other over past votes and mistakes.
The suggested strategy changes that have worked their way up to Bush from the Pentagon and his National Security Council staff are intended to help Karzai extend and solidify his rule nationally if, as expected, he wins the presidential election in early October. U.S. policy changes would start shortly after the Afghan vote.
The CIA has already begun to chart the narcotics involvement of local politicians and militias, especially those who have links to the al Qaeda and Taliban bands operating along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. As insecurity increases in the Afghan countryside, those links seem to be growing.
Moreover, White House and Pentagon hopes have evaporated that the Europeans, through NATO or bilaterally, would take on significant counter-narcotics tasks in Afghanistan.
Britain provided only two rickety helicopters for that mission. Germany invested 29 police officers in training Afghan law enforcement, and other nations did even less. Haggling inside NATO over who would pay for a half-dozen helicopters delayed for months the arrival of badly needed counterinsurgency help.
There has been a broad Western failure to follow up the successful U.S. military campaign of 2001 with a workable reconstruction agenda in Afghanistan. USAID projects have not provided alternative livelihoods for poppy-growing farmers, who reap little of the riches of the drug trade they feed.
The need to broaden the manhunt strategy into one embracing reconstruction has already been adopted by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has brought American military commanders into the interagency country team he established at the embassy in Kabul.
A memorandum that has been making the rounds as part of the Pentagon's own review goes even further in urging a countrywide counterinsurgency effort. It was written by Robert Andrews, a retired CIA and Defense Department official for the Pentagon's Afghanistan group headed by Martin Hoffmann.
"We have to understand better that low-intensity conflict is high-complexity warfare," Andrews told me when I asked him about the memo. "The narcotics problem has become a major impediment to ridding Afghanistan of warlords, the Taliban and al Qaeda. We can shoot an arrow through the heart of the problem with an integrated counterinsurgency program that hits drug lords and terrorists."
Using American troops to pursue such an amorphous program must always be a last resort. But the risks have grown so large in Afghanistan and the stakes are so huge that a change in strategy must be considered.
