Baby Boomers Owe America's Young People an ApologyBy Dennis PragerTuesday, December 4, 2007
We live in the age of group apologies. I would like to add one. The baby boomer generation needs to apologize to America, especially its young generation, for many sins. Here is a partial list:
First and perhaps foremost, we apologize for robbing many of you of a childhood.
We baby boomers were allowed perhaps the most innocent childhoods known to history. We grew up without material want, in one of the most decent places in world history, with media that preserved our sexual and other innocence, in schools that generally taught us well, and we were allowed childhood play from boy-girl play to rough and tumble boy-boy play to monkey bars and ringalievio. Our generation has deprived you of all these things. And while we were aware of the threat of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, few of us believed that we were threatened with death anywhere near the amount we have scared you about death from secondhand smoke, global warming and heterosexual AIDS, to mention just a few of the exaggerated death scares we have inflicted on you.
Our generation came up with two truly foolish slogans that also ended up robbing you of childhood.
One was, "Never trust anyone over 30." Our infantile attitude toward adult authority has inflicted great harm on you. Because of it, many baby boomers decided not to become adults, and this has had disastrous consequences in your lives. It deprived you of one of the greatest needs in your life -- adults. That in turn deprived you of something as important as love -- parental and other adult authority. With little parental authority, you were left with little personal security, few guardrails and a diminished sense of order in life. And we transferred this denial of authority to virtually all authority figures, from teachers to police.
The other slogan whose awful consequences we baby boomers bequeathed to you was, "Make love, not war." Our parents had liberated the world from immeasurably cruel and murderous regimes in Germany and Japan -- solely thanks to waging war. But instead of concluding that war could do great moral good, we sang ourselves silly with such inane lyrics as "Give peace a chance," as if that deals in any way with the world's most monstrous evils. So we taught you to make love and not war. And we succeeded.
We made you anti-war and almost completely sexualized your lives. We told you that having sex was terrific or at least to be expected, even in early teens, and that your only concerns should be avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and getting pregnant. And if you did get pregnant, we made sure that you could extinguish the life you were carrying as effortlessly and guiltlessly as possible.
We started teaching you about sexuality and homosexuality in early grade school and we taught you how to put condoms on bananas. It is true that we did not grow up learning about these things at such young ages -- certainly our schools never taught us about these things -- but we chalked that up to the preposterous, if not reactionary, values of the 1950s and early 1960s. We had contempt for our parents believing that "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It to Beaver" and "Superman" -- with the show's motto of "truth, justice, and the American way" -- were good things for young people to be exposed to. So we replaced these shows with MTV's mind-numbing parade of three-second images and sex-drenched shows for teenagers. Sorry.
We also made you weak. We did everything possible to ensure that you suffered no pain. Sometimes we changed game scores if a team was winning by too large a margin; we abolished dodgeball lest anyone suffer early removal from the game; and we gave trophies to all of you who played on baseball teams, no matter how awfully you or your team played so that none of you missed getting a trophy while members of another team did. Much of this was thanks to the self-esteem-without-having-to-earn-it movement, which in our generation's almost infinite lack of wisdom we inflicted upon you. Sorry for that, too.
We also apologize for coming close to ruining so many of your schools and universities. Despite the unprecedented sums of money we had America spend on education, most of you got an education quite inferior to the one we got at a fraction of the cost. But we thought of our teachers as fools (they were, after all, over 30) who just concentrated on reading, writing and arithmetic (and history, music and art). We were sure we knew better and we therefore concentrated on sexual issues, and teaching you about peace, global warming and the horrors of smoking. The fact that few high school graduates can identify Mozart, let alone were ever exposed to his music, is far less significant to many baby boomers than your knowledge of the alleged perils of secondhand smoke. Most of you cannot identify Stalin either, and we are sorry for that, too. But, hey, we did make sure you saw Al Gore's film.
And a real apology to those of you hooked on drugs. While your choice to do drugs is your responsibility, it was our generation that romanticized them and made them cool. "Mind expanding" we called them. But it turns out that they don't expand minds, they destroy them. Sorry.
And, young women, we apologize especially to you. Many of us baby boomers bought into the feminist idea that getting married and making a family with a man were far less fulfilling than career success and that marriage itself is "sexist" and "patriarchal." So, to those of you women who have career success and didn't get married, we sincerely apologize. Turns out that most careers aren't as fulfilling as we promised.
So we really blew it, and what's really amazing is that few of us have changed our minds. Most people get wiser as they get older. But not those of us baby boomers who still believe these things. Of course, many of us never bought into these awful ideas that have so hurt you and our country, and some of us have grown up. But many of us still talk, think, dress and curse the same as we did in the '60s and '70s. And we're still fighting what we consider the real Axis of Evil: American racism, sexism and imperialism.
But for those of us who know the damage baby boomers as a whole did to you, a heartfelt apology.
Dennis Prager is a radio show host, contributing columnist for Townhall.com, and author of 4 books including Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
'Gay question' general linked to Clinton
'Gay question' general linked to Clinton
By: Kenneth P. Vogel November 29, 2007 12:13 PM EST
The retired general who asked about gays and lesbians serving in the military at the CNN/YouTube Republican debate on Wednesday is a co-chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton's National Military Veterans group.Retired Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr was named a co-chairman of the group this month, according to a campaign press release.He was also active in John F. Kerry's 2004 campaign for president.Kerr asked candidates “why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians.”
After the debate, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett said on a CNN panel that he was being told Kerr was involved with the Democratic presidential campaign of Clinton, a New York senator.CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who moderated the debate and the panel, said that if that was the case, CNN should have identified Kerr as such.
David Bohrman, a CNN senior vice president and executive producer of the debate, later said: "We regret this and apologize to the Republican candidates. We never would have used the general's question had we known that he was connected to any presidential candidate."
Kerr told CNN that he had not done work for the Clinton campaign, and CNN verified before the debate that he had not contributed money to any candidate, the broadcaster said in a blog post after the debate.
Kerr told CNN he is a member of the Log Cabin Republicans and was representing no one other than himself, CNN said.
On Thursday, Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer said the retired general "is not a campaign employee and was not acting on behalf of the campaign." A Nov. 11 press release retrieved from the website of the nonpartisan magazine Campaigns & Elections lists Kerr as one of nearly 50 co-chairs of “Veterans and Military Retirees for Hillary."Clinton’s campaign did not respond to an e-mail asking about Kerr’s role in her campaign or whether he was acting on behalf of the campaign.Kerr also was on Kerry’s National Veterans Steering Committee, according to a campaign press release retrieved from the website of George Washington University.And Kerr appears to be an active opponent of the U.S. military’s current stance on gays and lesbians serving in the military, known as the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy.
He appeared on the now-defunct CNN partner network CNNfn in December 2003 to discuss the 10th anniversary of the policy. According to a transcript, he called it “a tremendous waste of personnel, a tremendous waste of financial resources for the United States.”Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, got first crack at Kerr’s question. He said he thought having openly gay men and lesbian women in the military “would be bad for unit cohesion.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, answering next, basically agreed.Cooper then singled out former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who in 1994 said he looked forward to the day gays and lesbians could serve openly in the military.Romney said times have changed. Though he said he laughed when he first heard talk of the don’t ask, don’t tell policy, and didn’t think it would work, he said: “You know what? It’s been there now for 15 years, and it seems to have worked.”Cooper then turned to Kerr and asked whether he felt he got an answer to his question.Kerr responded: “With all due respect, I did not get an answer from the candidates. American men and women in the military are professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians. ... Today, don’t ask, don’t tell is destructive to our military policy.”Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a decorated Vietnam veteran, got the last word on the subject.
He said, “almost unanimously, they [high-ranking military officials] tell me that this present policy is working, that we have the best military in history, we have the bravest, most professional, best-prepared, and that this policy ought to be continued because it’s working.”
TM & © THE POLITICO & POLITICO.COM, a division of Allbritton Communications Company
By: Kenneth P. Vogel November 29, 2007 12:13 PM EST
The retired general who asked about gays and lesbians serving in the military at the CNN/YouTube Republican debate on Wednesday is a co-chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton's National Military Veterans group.Retired Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr was named a co-chairman of the group this month, according to a campaign press release.He was also active in John F. Kerry's 2004 campaign for president.Kerr asked candidates “why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians.”
After the debate, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett said on a CNN panel that he was being told Kerr was involved with the Democratic presidential campaign of Clinton, a New York senator.CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who moderated the debate and the panel, said that if that was the case, CNN should have identified Kerr as such.
David Bohrman, a CNN senior vice president and executive producer of the debate, later said: "We regret this and apologize to the Republican candidates. We never would have used the general's question had we known that he was connected to any presidential candidate."
Kerr told CNN that he had not done work for the Clinton campaign, and CNN verified before the debate that he had not contributed money to any candidate, the broadcaster said in a blog post after the debate.
Kerr told CNN he is a member of the Log Cabin Republicans and was representing no one other than himself, CNN said.
On Thursday, Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer said the retired general "is not a campaign employee and was not acting on behalf of the campaign." A Nov. 11 press release retrieved from the website of the nonpartisan magazine Campaigns & Elections lists Kerr as one of nearly 50 co-chairs of “Veterans and Military Retirees for Hillary."Clinton’s campaign did not respond to an e-mail asking about Kerr’s role in her campaign or whether he was acting on behalf of the campaign.Kerr also was on Kerry’s National Veterans Steering Committee, according to a campaign press release retrieved from the website of George Washington University.And Kerr appears to be an active opponent of the U.S. military’s current stance on gays and lesbians serving in the military, known as the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy.
He appeared on the now-defunct CNN partner network CNNfn in December 2003 to discuss the 10th anniversary of the policy. According to a transcript, he called it “a tremendous waste of personnel, a tremendous waste of financial resources for the United States.”Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, got first crack at Kerr’s question. He said he thought having openly gay men and lesbian women in the military “would be bad for unit cohesion.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, answering next, basically agreed.Cooper then singled out former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who in 1994 said he looked forward to the day gays and lesbians could serve openly in the military.Romney said times have changed. Though he said he laughed when he first heard talk of the don’t ask, don’t tell policy, and didn’t think it would work, he said: “You know what? It’s been there now for 15 years, and it seems to have worked.”Cooper then turned to Kerr and asked whether he felt he got an answer to his question.Kerr responded: “With all due respect, I did not get an answer from the candidates. American men and women in the military are professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians. ... Today, don’t ask, don’t tell is destructive to our military policy.”Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a decorated Vietnam veteran, got the last word on the subject.
He said, “almost unanimously, they [high-ranking military officials] tell me that this present policy is working, that we have the best military in history, we have the bravest, most professional, best-prepared, and that this policy ought to be continued because it’s working.”
TM & © THE POLITICO & POLITICO.COM, a division of Allbritton Communications Company
CNN Allows Clinton Backer to Question GOP Candidates in YouTube Debate
CNN Allows Clinton Backer to Question GOP Candidates in YouTube Debate
Thursday , November 29, 2007
A CNN host acknowledged the participation of a retired Army colonel linked to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a televised Republican debate Wednesday.
Keith Kerr of Santa Rosa, Calif., who revealed himself as gay, challenged the eight candidates via video message and on stage at the CNN/YouTube debate in Florida on the right of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military.
The broadcast, however, failed to mention that Kerr, who served as a brigadier general in the reserves, is a member of a gay and lesbian steering committee for Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Read the Clinton campaign release naming Kerr to the steering committee.
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer has denied that the campaign had any knowledge ahead of time that Kerr was going to participate in the debate, and Kerr said he did not inform the campaign of his plans.
It turns out Kerr wasn't the only Democratic supporter asking questions. One woman who identified herself as Journey from Texas, and who has a Web page in which she goes by the name Paperserenade asked the candidates about whether they would prosecute women and doctors if abortion were made illegal and the practice continued. After the debate, she posted a Web video wearing a John Edwards '08 T-shirt. In the posting, she said she was disappointed by the responses she got, particularly from Fred Thompson, though it's the answer she expected.
Another questioner, Leeann Anderson, asked about the danger of lead toys from China. Anderson, an activist on the issue, is reportedly an assistant to Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America. The union endorsed Edwards earlier this month, and Anderson's question is posted on the steelworkers' YouTube page next to a picture of Edwards.
As for Kerr, he has been an activist against the military's don't-ask-don't-tell policy for years. He appeared on CNN twice in 2003 discussing his opposition to the policy that says service men and women will be dismissed from service for revealing their gay orientation. But as if reading from that policy Wednesday, Kerr told FOX News that CNN "never asked" him if he is a Clinton supporter so he "never told."
Kerr submitted the question for Republican candidates at the video debate "a couple months ago," and said last Saturday CNN called him and said they'd like him to come to the debate. He said the cable news network paid for his flight, his hotel and his transportation to and from the event.
According to the Clinton campaign, members of Clinton's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Steering Committee have endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in their individual capacity and work with the campaign on several areas including political outreach, communications, policy advice and counsel and fundraising.
The retired officer said his activities with the Clinton campaign are minimal. He receives e-mails from the campaign and has been invited to a fundraiser in San Francisco. He said he offered to pay "some token amount like 100 bucks" to attend the fundraiser, but as of yet has given no contribution
"I have not done any work. Several friends asked me if I would allow my name to be listed and I agreed. She's been such a strong advocate for gay rights," he told CNN on Thursday.
He added that he had been a Log Cabin Republican for a long time and recently changed from Republican to independent in California. He said he had supported the GOP but "these guys are just partisanly homophobic."
Following the debate, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said in a broadcast statement that Kerr's political ties to Clinton were unknown to the network.
"We don't know if he is still on it," said Cooper. "We are trying to find out that information. Certainly, had we had that information we would have acknowledged that in using his question, if we had used it all."
Watch Anderson Cooper's comments regarding the Hillary supporter.
During the debate, Kerr said he wanted to know why the GOP candidates think that "American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians."
Candidates Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and John McCain all answered the question. Hunter said it would be "bad for unit cohesion" for openly homosexual people to serve in the ranks. Huckabee said the the Uniform Code of Military Justice states that such "conduct could put at risk the morale." Romney said that in the midst of a war is not the time to change policy, and he would listen to recommendations from military leaders. McCain said he respects the general's service to the nation but believes the leaders in the field when they say the present policy is working.
Thursday , November 29, 2007
A CNN host acknowledged the participation of a retired Army colonel linked to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a televised Republican debate Wednesday.
Keith Kerr of Santa Rosa, Calif., who revealed himself as gay, challenged the eight candidates via video message and on stage at the CNN/YouTube debate in Florida on the right of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military.
The broadcast, however, failed to mention that Kerr, who served as a brigadier general in the reserves, is a member of a gay and lesbian steering committee for Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Read the Clinton campaign release naming Kerr to the steering committee.
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer has denied that the campaign had any knowledge ahead of time that Kerr was going to participate in the debate, and Kerr said he did not inform the campaign of his plans.
It turns out Kerr wasn't the only Democratic supporter asking questions. One woman who identified herself as Journey from Texas, and who has a Web page in which she goes by the name Paperserenade asked the candidates about whether they would prosecute women and doctors if abortion were made illegal and the practice continued. After the debate, she posted a Web video wearing a John Edwards '08 T-shirt. In the posting, she said she was disappointed by the responses she got, particularly from Fred Thompson, though it's the answer she expected.
Another questioner, Leeann Anderson, asked about the danger of lead toys from China. Anderson, an activist on the issue, is reportedly an assistant to Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America. The union endorsed Edwards earlier this month, and Anderson's question is posted on the steelworkers' YouTube page next to a picture of Edwards.
As for Kerr, he has been an activist against the military's don't-ask-don't-tell policy for years. He appeared on CNN twice in 2003 discussing his opposition to the policy that says service men and women will be dismissed from service for revealing their gay orientation. But as if reading from that policy Wednesday, Kerr told FOX News that CNN "never asked" him if he is a Clinton supporter so he "never told."
Kerr submitted the question for Republican candidates at the video debate "a couple months ago," and said last Saturday CNN called him and said they'd like him to come to the debate. He said the cable news network paid for his flight, his hotel and his transportation to and from the event.
According to the Clinton campaign, members of Clinton's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Steering Committee have endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in their individual capacity and work with the campaign on several areas including political outreach, communications, policy advice and counsel and fundraising.
The retired officer said his activities with the Clinton campaign are minimal. He receives e-mails from the campaign and has been invited to a fundraiser in San Francisco. He said he offered to pay "some token amount like 100 bucks" to attend the fundraiser, but as of yet has given no contribution
"I have not done any work. Several friends asked me if I would allow my name to be listed and I agreed. She's been such a strong advocate for gay rights," he told CNN on Thursday.
He added that he had been a Log Cabin Republican for a long time and recently changed from Republican to independent in California. He said he had supported the GOP but "these guys are just partisanly homophobic."
Following the debate, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said in a broadcast statement that Kerr's political ties to Clinton were unknown to the network.
"We don't know if he is still on it," said Cooper. "We are trying to find out that information. Certainly, had we had that information we would have acknowledged that in using his question, if we had used it all."
Watch Anderson Cooper's comments regarding the Hillary supporter.
During the debate, Kerr said he wanted to know why the GOP candidates think that "American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians."
Candidates Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and John McCain all answered the question. Hunter said it would be "bad for unit cohesion" for openly homosexual people to serve in the ranks. Huckabee said the the Uniform Code of Military Justice states that such "conduct could put at risk the morale." Romney said that in the midst of a war is not the time to change policy, and he would listen to recommendations from military leaders. McCain said he respects the general's service to the nation but believes the leaders in the field when they say the present policy is working.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Thanks & Praise in Baghdad
You won't ever read about this in our Liberal media...
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/thanks-and-praise.htm
Thanks and Praise
Thanks and Praise: I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.
A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Infantry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.
The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/thanks-and-praise.htm
Thanks and Praise
Thanks and Praise: I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.
A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Infantry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.
The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
9-11-2001 Video Tributes
This is great! May we never forget.
http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=QZFkZiwMLZ4&eurl=http%3A//webmail.pas.earthlink.net/wam/preview.jsp%3Fmsgid%3D43866%26folder%3DINBOX%26isSeen%3Dfalse%26x%3D-681691243&iurl=http%3A//img.youtube.com/vi/QZFkZiwMLZ4/default.jpg&t=OEgsToPDskJDYm_Q5QHzMQY7Jh5b6mZG&rel=1&border=0
Here's one by Josh Groban:
http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=QZFkZiwMLZ4&eurl=http%3A//webmail.pas.earthlink.net/wam/preview.jsp%3Fmsgid%3D43866%26folder%3DINBOX%26isSeen%3Dfalse%26x%3D-681691243&iurl=http%3A//img.youtube.com/vi/QZFkZiwMLZ4/default.jpg&t=OEgsToPDskJDYm_Q5QHzMQY7Jh5b6mZG&rel=1&border=0
http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=QZFkZiwMLZ4&eurl=http%3A//webmail.pas.earthlink.net/wam/preview.jsp%3Fmsgid%3D43866%26folder%3DINBOX%26isSeen%3Dfalse%26x%3D-681691243&iurl=http%3A//img.youtube.com/vi/QZFkZiwMLZ4/default.jpg&t=OEgsToPDskJDYm_Q5QHzMQY7Jh5b6mZG&rel=1&border=0
Here's one by Josh Groban:
http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=QZFkZiwMLZ4&eurl=http%3A//webmail.pas.earthlink.net/wam/preview.jsp%3Fmsgid%3D43866%26folder%3DINBOX%26isSeen%3Dfalse%26x%3D-681691243&iurl=http%3A//img.youtube.com/vi/QZFkZiwMLZ4/default.jpg&t=OEgsToPDskJDYm_Q5QHzMQY7Jh5b6mZG&rel=1&border=0
Monday, October 1, 2007
Tribute to our people in uniform
This is something that you should ALL see. Never forget their sacrifice, never forget the price that we had to pay for freedom and liberty!
I pray that you thank every person that you see in uniform or veteran who has served (everyone in our family practices this daily)... regardless of your politics! Men & women fought and died so that all of us have the freedom to speak our minds without persecution and to practice religions (even some who are committed to killing ALL Americans).
God bless our people in uniform and those who served our great country.
I pray that you thank every person that you see in uniform or veteran who has served (everyone in our family practices this daily)... regardless of your politics! Men & women fought and died so that all of us have the freedom to speak our minds without persecution and to practice religions (even some who are committed to killing ALL Americans).
God bless our people in uniform and those who served our great country.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Interesting Article from the Weekly Standard on Iraq
Iraq Report: Taji Tribes Turn on Mahdi Army and al Qaeda
Operation Phantom Thunder and the Baghdad Security Plan continue to place pressure on al Qaeda in Iraq, allied Sunni insurgent groups, the Mahdi Army and the Iranian-backed Special Group. In Baghdad, junior al Qaeda in Iraq operatives are reportedly cooperating with Coalition forces and a series of car bombs hit a Shia area of the capital. In the Belts, U.S. and Iraqi forces maintain aggressive operations against al Qaeda and insurgent cells as both Sunni and Shia tribal leaders in and around Taji have banded together to fight the Mahdi Army and al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the U.S. captured two more members of the Special Groups and have indicated that Iran is now smuggling Chinese made weapons into Iraq.
A Soldier from the 1st Cavalry Division clears an al Qaeda prison camp south of Baqubah, Iraq.
Baghdad
The London Times reported that junior al Qaeda in Iraq foot soldiers are turning on their leaders and acting as informants in the Baghdad district of Doura. "The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheiks have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement," the Times said. The low level operatives have become disgusted with al Qaeda's tactics of brutality.
A series of four bombings over the past two days resulted in 14 killed and 37 wounded. Sunday's attack near the al-Khilani square in central Baghdad consisted of a motorcycle bomb; two were killed and 18 wounded in the strike. Three car bombs ripped through Shia neighborhood in Karradah. One bomb was aimed at a police patrol and another hit an outdoor market. Twelve were killed and 19 wounded in the attacks.
Salahadin
U.S. forces continue the process of turning tribal leaders and Sunni insurgent groups against al Qaeda in Iraq. The latest success came in Salahadin province, where 25 Sunni and Shia tribes in and around the city of Taji banded together to fight both al Qaeda in Iraq and the Mahdi Army. Taji is just 12 miles north of Baghdad and sits along the strategic supply lines to the northern provinces.
Salahadin tribes formed the Salahadin Awakening in late May, and al Qaeda in Iraq has targeted the group in an effort to destroy disrupt its activities. Yesterday, five senior tribal leaders were killed and 12 wounded when a suicide bomber penetrated a meeting of the Taji council. The Mahdi Army has attacked family members of the group as well.
Iraqi army forces are targeting al Qaeda's network in the Taji region. Iraqi troops conducted an air assault northwest of Taji on July 20. The target was "a suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq leader suspected of numerous crimes including a recent attack that destroyed a bridge on a primary Iraqi transportation route" in the Habbaniyah area in Anbar province.
"He is also allegedly responsible for facilitating foreign fighters and the planning and execution of multiple improvised explosive device attacks in Ramadi and other areas. The insurgent leader and his cell are also suspected of murdering and intimidating Iraqi citizens, conducting oil smuggling operations, and committing a string of highway robberies in an effort to fund al Qaeda activities."
U.S. soldiers also freed three Iraqis being held hostage at an insurgent safe house south of Samarra. Four insurgents were captured during the raid.
Diyala, Babil and Anbar
Operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and allied insurgent groups are ongoing in the belts of Diyala, Northern Babil and Anbar province. In the city of Miqdadiyah in Diyala, Coalition forces killed nine insurgents and captured eight during a series of raids and patrols. An insurgent safe house and several weapons caches were also found in the region.
In northern Babil province, the recently launched Operation Marne Avalanche in the Iskandariyah region has resulted in four insurgents killed and 37 captured over the course of four days. In a separate operation Iraqi soldiers arrested a member of an al Qaeda kidnapping ring on July 18.
In Anbar province, tribal leaders in the city of Zaidon have turned on al Qaeda and established local security forces.
Iranian-backed Special Groups
The Iranian-backed, Qods Force-directed Special Groups continues to remain a high priority for Coalition and Iraqi forces. On Sunday, Coalition forces captured "two suspected terrorists that may be affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) from Iran in a raid Sunday near the Iranian border East of Baghdad," Multinational Forces Iraq said. "The suspects may be associated with a network of terrorists that have been smuggling Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFPs), other weapons, personnel and money from Iran into Iraq."
On July 22, U.S. troops found a cache that contained an explosively formed penetrator and parts to make more, along with home made explosives, in the West Rashid district in Baghdad. Also, Iran is believed to be smuggling Chinese made rockets into Iraq, Admiral Mark Fox said in a recent briefing.
Al Qaeda
The daily raids against al Qaeda’s leadership and facilitator cells resulted in one al Qaeda operative killed and 26 captured over the past two days. Sunday's operations in Baghdad, Mosul, Fallujah, and Yusifiyah resulted in one al Qaeda operative killed and 14 captured. Twelve al Qaeda operatives were captured on Monday during raids in Mosul, Baghdad, Yusifiyah, and Tarmiyah.
Operation Phantom Thunder and the Baghdad Security Plan continue to place pressure on al Qaeda in Iraq, allied Sunni insurgent groups, the Mahdi Army and the Iranian-backed Special Group. In Baghdad, junior al Qaeda in Iraq operatives are reportedly cooperating with Coalition forces and a series of car bombs hit a Shia area of the capital. In the Belts, U.S. and Iraqi forces maintain aggressive operations against al Qaeda and insurgent cells as both Sunni and Shia tribal leaders in and around Taji have banded together to fight the Mahdi Army and al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the U.S. captured two more members of the Special Groups and have indicated that Iran is now smuggling Chinese made weapons into Iraq.
A Soldier from the 1st Cavalry Division clears an al Qaeda prison camp south of Baqubah, Iraq.
Baghdad
The London Times reported that junior al Qaeda in Iraq foot soldiers are turning on their leaders and acting as informants in the Baghdad district of Doura. "The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheiks have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement," the Times said. The low level operatives have become disgusted with al Qaeda's tactics of brutality.
A series of four bombings over the past two days resulted in 14 killed and 37 wounded. Sunday's attack near the al-Khilani square in central Baghdad consisted of a motorcycle bomb; two were killed and 18 wounded in the strike. Three car bombs ripped through Shia neighborhood in Karradah. One bomb was aimed at a police patrol and another hit an outdoor market. Twelve were killed and 19 wounded in the attacks.
Salahadin
U.S. forces continue the process of turning tribal leaders and Sunni insurgent groups against al Qaeda in Iraq. The latest success came in Salahadin province, where 25 Sunni and Shia tribes in and around the city of Taji banded together to fight both al Qaeda in Iraq and the Mahdi Army. Taji is just 12 miles north of Baghdad and sits along the strategic supply lines to the northern provinces.
Salahadin tribes formed the Salahadin Awakening in late May, and al Qaeda in Iraq has targeted the group in an effort to destroy disrupt its activities. Yesterday, five senior tribal leaders were killed and 12 wounded when a suicide bomber penetrated a meeting of the Taji council. The Mahdi Army has attacked family members of the group as well.
Iraqi army forces are targeting al Qaeda's network in the Taji region. Iraqi troops conducted an air assault northwest of Taji on July 20. The target was "a suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq leader suspected of numerous crimes including a recent attack that destroyed a bridge on a primary Iraqi transportation route" in the Habbaniyah area in Anbar province.
"He is also allegedly responsible for facilitating foreign fighters and the planning and execution of multiple improvised explosive device attacks in Ramadi and other areas. The insurgent leader and his cell are also suspected of murdering and intimidating Iraqi citizens, conducting oil smuggling operations, and committing a string of highway robberies in an effort to fund al Qaeda activities."
U.S. soldiers also freed three Iraqis being held hostage at an insurgent safe house south of Samarra. Four insurgents were captured during the raid.
Diyala, Babil and Anbar
Operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and allied insurgent groups are ongoing in the belts of Diyala, Northern Babil and Anbar province. In the city of Miqdadiyah in Diyala, Coalition forces killed nine insurgents and captured eight during a series of raids and patrols. An insurgent safe house and several weapons caches were also found in the region.
In northern Babil province, the recently launched Operation Marne Avalanche in the Iskandariyah region has resulted in four insurgents killed and 37 captured over the course of four days. In a separate operation Iraqi soldiers arrested a member of an al Qaeda kidnapping ring on July 18.
In Anbar province, tribal leaders in the city of Zaidon have turned on al Qaeda and established local security forces.
Iranian-backed Special Groups
The Iranian-backed, Qods Force-directed Special Groups continues to remain a high priority for Coalition and Iraqi forces. On Sunday, Coalition forces captured "two suspected terrorists that may be affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) from Iran in a raid Sunday near the Iranian border East of Baghdad," Multinational Forces Iraq said. "The suspects may be associated with a network of terrorists that have been smuggling Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFPs), other weapons, personnel and money from Iran into Iraq."
On July 22, U.S. troops found a cache that contained an explosively formed penetrator and parts to make more, along with home made explosives, in the West Rashid district in Baghdad. Also, Iran is believed to be smuggling Chinese made rockets into Iraq, Admiral Mark Fox said in a recent briefing.
Al Qaeda
The daily raids against al Qaeda’s leadership and facilitator cells resulted in one al Qaeda operative killed and 26 captured over the past two days. Sunday's operations in Baghdad, Mosul, Fallujah, and Yusifiyah resulted in one al Qaeda operative killed and 14 captured. Twelve al Qaeda operatives were captured on Monday during raids in Mosul, Baghdad, Yusifiyah, and Tarmiyah.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Another Optimistic Article on The Surge's Positive Progress...
July 30, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
A War We Just Might Win
By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK
Washington
VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.
Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.
In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship.
In Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.
We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.
But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).
In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.
In the past, few Iraqi units could do more than provide a few “jundis” (soldiers) to put a thin Iraqi face on largely American operations. Today, in only a few sectors did we find American commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were useless — something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous trip to Iraq in late 2005.
The additional American military formations brought in as part of the surge, General Petraeus’s determination to hold areas until they are truly secure before redeploying units, and the increasing competence of the Iraqis has had another critical effect: no more whack-a-mole, with insurgents popping back up after the Americans leave.
In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.
Another surprise was how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.
In some places where we have failed to provide the civilian manpower to fill out the reconstruction teams, the surge has still allowed the military to fashion its own advisory groups from battalion, brigade and division staffs. We talked to dozens of military officers who before the war had known little about governance or business but were now ably immersing themselves in projects to provide the average Iraqi with a decent life.
Outside Baghdad, one of the biggest factors in the progress so far has been the efforts to decentralize power to the provinces and local governments. But more must be done. For example, the Iraqi National Police, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, remain mostly a disaster. In response, many towns and neighborhoods are standing up local police forces, which generally prove more effective, less corrupt and less sectarian. The coalition has to force the warlords in Baghdad to allow the creation of neutral security forces beyond their control.
In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.
How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.
Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.
Op-Ed Contributor
A War We Just Might Win
By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK
Washington
VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.
Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.
In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship.
In Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.
We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.
But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).
In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.
In the past, few Iraqi units could do more than provide a few “jundis” (soldiers) to put a thin Iraqi face on largely American operations. Today, in only a few sectors did we find American commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were useless — something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous trip to Iraq in late 2005.
The additional American military formations brought in as part of the surge, General Petraeus’s determination to hold areas until they are truly secure before redeploying units, and the increasing competence of the Iraqis has had another critical effect: no more whack-a-mole, with insurgents popping back up after the Americans leave.
In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.
Another surprise was how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.
In some places where we have failed to provide the civilian manpower to fill out the reconstruction teams, the surge has still allowed the military to fashion its own advisory groups from battalion, brigade and division staffs. We talked to dozens of military officers who before the war had known little about governance or business but were now ably immersing themselves in projects to provide the average Iraqi with a decent life.
Outside Baghdad, one of the biggest factors in the progress so far has been the efforts to decentralize power to the provinces and local governments. But more must be done. For example, the Iraqi National Police, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, remain mostly a disaster. In response, many towns and neighborhoods are standing up local police forces, which generally prove more effective, less corrupt and less sectarian. The coalition has to force the warlords in Baghdad to allow the creation of neutral security forces beyond their control.
In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.
How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.
Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.
New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner John Burns on Iraq, Iran and how the surge is working.
Here is a significant interview by Hugh Hewitt with a NY Times Editor on Iraq... I would enjoy hearing your feedback on how the Libs are going to combat one of their own admitting to the surge working.
BC
HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it’s been about six months since we spoke, and I gather you’re in Baghdad today?
JB: I am indeed.
HH: How long have you been back in Baghdad?
JB: About three months. We take long rotations here, and then we reward ourselves with nice long breaks back home in the United States, or in my case, in the United Kingdom.
HH: Well, there are three things I want to cover with you today, Mr. Burns. Where are we now in Iraq, in your view? Secondly, where Iraq might be in a couple of years, depending on a couple of developments that the United States might enact? And then finally, in hindsight, what we did right and what we did wrong over the last four years. But let’s start with what you see in Baghdad today. Is the surge working?
JB: I think there’s no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops are making a difference. They’re definitely making a difference in Baghdad. Some of the crucial indicators of the war, metrics as the American command calls them, have moved in a positive direction from the American, and dare I say the Iraqi point of view, fewer car bombs, fewer bombs in general, lower levels of civilian casualties, quite remarkably lower levels of civilian casualties. And add in what they call the Baghdad belts, that’s to say the approaches to Baghdad, particularly in Diyala Province to the northeast, to in the area south of Baghdad in Babil Province, and to the west of Baghdad in Anbar Province, there’s no doubt that al Qaeda has taken something of a beating.
HH: Now when General Petraeus returns in September to make his report, do you expect Petraeus to be completely candid with the American people about the good news and the bad news in Iraq?
JB: I think there’s no doubt that he’ll be candid. As a matter of fact, every time I’ve spoken to him about it, he talks about the need to be forthright, and as he puts it, he said we’re not going to be putting lipstick on a pig. I think that’s a fairly, that’s military jargon which most Americans will understand. David Petraeus is a man who’s had a remarkably distinguished military career, and he is very clear that he thinks his responsibilities lie not to the White House alone, but to the White House and the Congress conjointly, and through them to the American people. I don’t think that this is just a profession, a claim. I think he really intends that, and he’s been very careful not to make commitments at the moment as to what he’s going to say, though we may guess it. And I think he’s going to say that the surge is having its effects, it hasn’t turned the tide of the war, there’s been too little time for it, and I think he and Ambassador Crocker, who will be his partner in that September report, are going to say one thing very clearly, and that is a quick, early withdrawal of American troops of the kind that is being argued by Nancy Pelosi, for example, would very likely lead to catastrophic levels of violence here. And in that, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will be saying something which is pretty broadly shared by people who live and work here, I have to say. The removal of American troops would very likely, we believe from all indications, lead to much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence, beyond anything we’ve seen to date.
HH: Mr. Burns, some anti-war critics have begun to attack General Petraeus as being not credible and not trustworthy for a variety of reasons, one he gave me an interview, he’s given other people interviews that they consider to be partisan, whatever. Do you believe he’ll be as trustworthy as anyone else speaking on the war?
JB: I do. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and there definitely was in the, in the Vietnam war, there was a failure of senior generals and the joint chiefs of staff to speak frankly about the Vietnam war early enough. There has definitely been some Pollyannaish character to the reporting of some of the generals here over the past three or four years, although in my own view, knowing virtually all of those generals, I don’t think that that was out of fealty to the White House or Mr. Rumsfeld. It’s a difficult and complex question which we really don’t have time to discuss here. But to speak of General Petraeus in particular, General Petraeus is 54 years old. Let’s look at this just simply as a matter of career, beyond the matter of principle on which I think we could also say we could expect him to make a forthright report. At 54, General Petraeus is a young four star general, who could expect to have as much as ten more years in the military. And he has every reason to give a forthright and frank report on this. And he says, and he says this insistently, that he will give a forthright, straightforward report, and if the people in Washington don’t like it, then they can find somebody else who will give his forthright, straightforward report. He is not without options on a personal basis, General Petraeus, and I think he, from everything I’ve learned from him, sees both a professional, in the first place, and personal imperative to state the truth as he sees it about this war.
HH: Speaking more broadly now, in the American higher command, is there optimism that the surge, given enough time, will bring the kind of stability to Iraq that we all hope it achieves?
JB: You know, optimism is a word which is rarely used around here. The word they would use is realism. You have to look at what the plan is. The plan is that with the surge, aimed primarily at al Qaeda, who are responsible for most of the spectacular attacks, the major suicide bombings, for example, that have driven the sectarian warfare here, the belief is, or the hope is, that with the surge, they can knock al Qaeda back, they can clear areas which have been virtually sanctuaries for al Qaeda, northeast, south, west and northwest of Baghdad, and in Baghdad itself, and then have Iraqi troops move in behind them. The problem here is time. How much time does the U.S. military have now, according to the American political timetable, to accomplish this? I think most generals would say, indeed have said, most serving current generals here have said that a drawdown, which took American troops from the 160,00 level they’re at now quickly down to 100,000 or 80,000 over the next, shall we say, year to eighteen months, that’s too fast. If you do that, I think they would say, though they don’t put it quite this frankly, that this war will be lost for sure. Given a little bit more time, they think that it is realistic to think that the Iraqi forces can move in behind them, and can take over the principal responsibilities for the war. The problem is, of course, that American generals have been saying this now for four years, and as we know, the Congress is beginning to run out of patience with that. But I think that they have a good plan now, at least if there is any plan that could save the situation here, any plan that could bring a reasonably successful end to the American enterprise here, it’s probably the plan they have right now.
HH: Now John Burns, a military historian was writing this week that he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda’s fighters, as well as perhaps radical Shiia militias prior to the Petraeus report. Have you heard warnings or concerns about such a thing?
JB: (pause) Hello?
HH: Yes, Mr. Burns, maybe you didn’t hear that.
JB: Sorry, you were breaking up quite badly, as you have been at several points during our discussion.
HH: Okay, I’ll try it again. A military historian wrote this week that he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda and radical Shiia fighters in the next weeks running up to the September report. Have you heard warnings about that, concerns about that kind of…
JB: Yeah, it’s not an original thought. As a matter of fact, it’s a thought we’ve heard expressed by General Petraeus and other commanders here, and you don’t have to be a crystal ball gazer or a seer to understand the risks in that. Indeed, there have been one or two attempts to pull off exactly that. The fear has been among the generals here that a major, spectacular attack, aimed for example at the Green Zone, the government and military command complex in the center of Baghdad, of the kinds that was mounted during the Tet offensive when, as you’ll recall, Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops got right inside the American embassy. That kind of attack would have an…whatever its consequences here, would have an enormous impact and possibly fatal impact from the American military point of view on the balance of opinion in the Congress. You’ll forgive me, I have American attack helicopters flying overhead right now over our compound here in Baghdad.
HH: Sure.
JB: There was one attempt already to pull off an attack of that kind. It was not on the Green Zone, but on an American military base southwest of Baghdad, when a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of high explosives, that’s by quick calculation, we’re talking about more than five tons of high explosives, got very close to what they call the wire of an American base in which there were several hundred American troops. A wary gunner in a watchtower, an American gunner, spotted the truck, and killed or fired at the driver, who got out of the truck wearing a suicide vest, as it happens, and the truck did not explode. Had it exploded, there could have been a repeat of what happened in Lebanon in 1982, when as you will recall, a truck bombing of the Marine barracks residential complex near Beiruit airport killed, as I recall, 249 Marines, and speeded Ronald Reagan in his decision to pull American Marines out of Beirut. So yes, there is a definite concern about that, and there has been a tightening of what the American military calls force protection, that is to say I guess self-evidently, the efforts that the force spends to protect itself in respect of that threat.
HH: When we spoke in February, you told us about the killing that had been underway in Adamiya, one of the places where sectarian violence in Baghdad had really flared in October. What’s your assessment of the Shiia on Sunni violence level in Baghdad six months into the surge?
JB: It is reduced, and it’s reduced primarily, as far as we can see, because of the increment, and I’m talking here of a virtual doubling of American troop strength in Baghdad, to speak only the neighborhood in which the New York Times operates here, the Rusafa neighborhood on the east side of the Tigris River, we here now have American troops quartered about a half a mile away from us for the first time in three years. So when you put American boots on the ground, you definitely have an inhibiting effect on this, and we’ve seen that in falling levels of sectarian violence. Where you don’t have American boots on the ground inside Baghdad, you see higher levels of sectarian violence. So I would that on the whole, the situation is somewhat better than it was, which is exactly what you would have expected by introducing a significant increase of American combat troops.
HH: John Burns, that means it’s down, but is there any kind of movement that you can see that would suggest that when, that the Iraqis are coming to their own conclusion that they’ve go to work through other means than violence, is there a lowering of the hatred level there in Baghdad?
JB: Well, of course, that would be what the American military would call the most crucial metric of all. If we could see that, then we would begin to see the end of the war. Now the fact is that the Iraqi people are, of course, exhausted with the violence. The question is at what point does that begin to translate into the kind of stepping up that would make a change in the warfare, specifically the flow of intelligence to the Iraqi and American militaries here, which would enable them to go after the people who are primarily responsible, whether it’s Shiite death squads or its suicide bombers, mostly Sunni suicide bombers. The intelligence flow, we’re told, is a good deal better, very much better than it was. This is an intelligence driven war, but the American military will tell you that they still don’t have enough of it. They have quite a good flow of intelligence, which has allowed them to have some spectacular successes, including one just last night in Karbala, southwest of Baghdad, the holy city where they went after a Shiite militia death squad leader. And this happens virtually every night, usually special forces operations, American led. They’ve have some success with that. So that’s really the key metric. When the Iraqi people’s exhaustion with this war begins to express itself in a full flow of intelligence to the Iraqi and American military, then you will see real progress in the war. Up until now, it’s much better, but it’s still, according to the American military, still not nearly enough to make it a crucial difference.
HH: Now another metric is what the political elite of a country says off the record. And you have those conversations with the Maliki government, with the opposition, with the people in parliament, etc. What do you hear from those conversations, John Burns? Are they beginning to think that it is possible to see a functioning government and a multi-party system that relies on other than guns?
JB: No, I would say that’s probably the most depressing or discouraging aspect of the entire situation. I think it’s probably fair to say that the Iraqi political leaders, Sunni, Shiia, Kurd in the main, are somewhat further apart now than they were six months ago. In other words, the Bush administration’s hope that the military surge would be accompanied by what they called a political surge, a movement towards some sort of national reconciliation, uniting around a kind of national compact, that has simply not occurred. Indeed, the gulf between the Shiite and Sunni leaders in the government is probably wider than it has ever been. There’s a great deal of recrimination. There’s hardly a day when the Sunnis do not, as they did again today, threaten to withdraw from the government altogether. There’s virtually no progress on the key benchmarks, as the Bush administration calls them, matters like a comprehensive oil law that will settle the issue of how oil revenues, which account for 90% of government revenues here, will in future be divided and spent between the various communities, and many other issues, eighteen of them, benchmarks identified by the Congress, there’s very little progress on those benchmarks. Where there is some progress is at the grass roots level, some progress, though we’re beginning to see tribal leaders, in particular, in some of the most heavily congested war areas, beginning to stand up and say they’ve had enough of it, and to volunteer to put forth their young men, either to join the Iraqi police or army, or to join in tribal auxiliaries, or levees if you will. That’s probably the most encouraging political sign. But at the Baghdad level, unfortunately, the United States still does not have an effective political partner.
HH: One of the arguments for those favoring a timeline for withdrawal that’s written in stone is that it will oblige the Iraqi political class to get serious about such things as the oil revenue division. Do you believe that’s an accurate argument?
JB: Well, you would think it would be so, wouldn’t you, that the threat of withdrawal of American troops, and the risk of a slide into catastrophic levels of violence, much higher than we’ve already seen, would impel the Iraqi leadership to move forward. But there’s a conundrum here. There’s a paradox. That’s to say the more that the Democrats in the Congress lead the push for an early withdrawal, the more Iraqi political leaders, particularly the Shiite political leaders, but the Sunnis as well, and the Kurds, are inclined to think that this is going to be settled, eventually, in an outright civil war, in consequence of which they are very, very unlikely or reluctant, at present, to make major concessions. They’re much more inclined to kind of hunker down. So in effect, the threats from Washington about a withdrawal, which we might have hoped would have brought about greater political cooperation in face of the threat that would ensue from that to the entire political establishment here, has had, as best we can gauge it, much more the opposite effect, of an effect that persuading people well, if the Americans are going, there’s absolutely no…and we’re going to have to settle this by a civil war, why should we make concessions on that matter right now? For example, to give you only one isolated exception, why should the Shiite leadership, in their view, make major concessions about widening the entry point for former Baathists into the government, into the senior levels of the military leadership, that’s to say bringing in high ranking Sunnis into the government and the army and the police, who themselves, the Sunnis, are in the main former stalwarts of Saddam’s regime. Why would the Shiites do that if they believe that in the end, they’re going to have to fight a civil war? This is not to reprove people in the Congress who think that the United States has spent enough blood and treasure here. It’s just a reality that that’s the way this debate seems to be being read by many Iraqi politicians.
HH: Would a, John Burns, a contrary approach yield the also counterintuitive result that if Congress and the United States said we’re there for two or three more years at this level, would that assist the political settlement, in your view, coming about?
JB: Unfortunately, I think the answer to that is probably not, and that’s something that General Casey and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker now, General Petraeus’ partner, if you will, are very wary of. They understand that there has to be something of a fire lit under the feet of the Iraqi leaders. It’s a paradox, it’s a conundrum, which is almost impossible to resolve. Now I think the last thing that you need is an Iraqi leadership which is already inclined to passivity on the matters, the questions that seem to matter most in terms of a national reconciliation here, the last thing they need is to be told, in effect, the deadline has been moved back three years. I would guess the way, if you will, to vector all of this would be to find some sort of solution, indeed it was the benchmark solution, which would say to them if you come together and you work on these benchmarks, then you will continue to have our support. But it seems to me that the mood in Congress has moved beyond that. The mood in Congress, as I read it from here, at least those who are leading the push for the withdrawal, are not much interested anymore in incremental progress by the Iraqi government. They’ve come to the conclusion that this war is lost, that no foreseeable movement by the Iraqi leaders will be enough to justify the continued investment of lives and dollars here by the United States, and that it’s time to pull out. And of course, you can make a strong argument to that effect.
HH: Do you believe that, John Burns, that the war is lost?
JB: No, I don’t, actually. I think the war is close to lost, but I don’t think that all hope is extinguished, and I do think, as do many of my colleagues in the media here, that an accelerated early withdrawal, something which reduced American troops, even if they were placed in large bases out in the desert to, say, something like 60-80,000 over a period of six to nine months, and in effect, leaving the fighting in the cities and the approaches to the cities to the Iraqis, I think the result of that would, in effect, be a rapid, a rapid progress towards an all-out civil war. And the people who are urging that kind of a drawdown, I think, have to take that into account. That’s not to say, I have to say, that that should be enough to inhibit those politicians who make that argument, because they could very well ask if that’s true, can those who argue for a continued high level of American military involvement here assure us that we wouldn’t come to the same point three or four years, and perhaps four or five thousand American soldiers killed later? In other words, we might only be putting off the evil day. It seems to me that’s where this discussion really has to focus. Can those who argue for staying here, can they offer any reasonable hope that three, two, three, four years out, the risk of a decline into cataclysmic civil war would be any less? If the answer is no they can’t, then it seems to me that strengthens the argument of those who say well, we might as well withdraw fairly quickly now.
HH: Now you’ve reported some very tough places, Sarajevo, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and after the liberation from the Taliban, and you’ve won Pulitzers for that. When you say cataclysmic civil war, what do you mean in terms of what you’ve seen before? What kind of violence do you imagine would break out after precipitous withdrawal?
JB: Well, let’s look at what’s happened already as a benchmark. Nobody really knows how many people have died here, but I would guess that in terms of the civilian population, it’s probably not less than 100-150,000, and it could be higher than that. I don’t think it’s as high as the 700,000 that some estimates have suggested, but I think it’s, and I know for a fact, that the sort of figures that were being discussed amongst senior American officials here, as a potential, should there be an early withdrawal and a progress to an all-out civil war, they’re talking about the possibility of as many as a million Iraqis dying. Now of course, that is suppositional. It’s entirely hypothetical. How could we possibly know? But I think you couldn’t rule out that possibility. And the question then arises, catastrophic as the effect on Iraq and the region would be, you know, what would be the effect on American credibility in the world, American power in the world, and America’s sense of itself? These are extremely difficult issues to resolve, and I can’t say, sitting here in Baghdad, that I have any particular wisdom about what the right course would be. And fortunately, as a reporter, I’m not paid money to offer that kind of wisdom, only to observe what I see. And there are days when I thank God that I’m not sitting in the United States Senate or the United States House of Representatives, with the responsibility of putting the ballot in the box on this.
HH: In his recent speech in Charleston, President Bush argued that to withdraw would be to empower al Qaeda in Anbar Province, and to allow them to set up a base there. What do you make of that projection, John Burns?
JB: Well, I think it’s self-evident. Whatever we may make of the original intent of coming here, if the United States did not have a problem with Islamic extremism in Iraq before 2003, it certainly does now. You only have to look at the pronouncements of Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri, his deputy, to see that they regard Iraq now as being, if you will, the front line of the Islamic militant battle against the West. And so if American troops were withdrawn, I think that there would be a very serious risk that large parts of this country will fall under the sway of al Qaeda linked groups. Now we could debate what that exactly means. Al Qaeda’s a holding company. Does that mean that Mr. bin Laden would be able to direct affairs in Afghanistan? No, I don’t think he would. I don’t think he does now. But it would mean that Islamic extremists who bear the worst intent towards the United States would have a base similar to the base they had in Afghanistan before 9/11 from which to operate, and I think it’s very likely that they would then begin to want to expatriate their hatred of the United States in some way or another. In fact, it’s already the case, that there are parts of Iraq which are under the sway of groups that swear allegiance to al Qaeda. And just to speak of one of them, the city of Sumarra, where I was yesterday, it’s about sixty miles north of Baghdad, is definitely under the sway of al Qaeda right now. And that would likely get very much worse in the event of an accelerated withdrawal. So I don’t think it’s purely propaganda, political propaganda on the part of the Bush administration to say that there would be a major al Qaeda problem here. It seems to me it’s absolutely self-evident that there would be.
HH: Now given that you covered Afghanistan from the Taliban era, would they have a greater lethality anchored in Iraq than they did when they were anchored in Afghanistan, John Burns, al Qaeda I mean?
JB: I’m sorry, I missed that. Do you want to repeat that?
HH: Sure.
JB: I understood you were asking me about the lethality of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
HH: No, I was asking when al Qaeda was in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, they obviously developed potential and capabilities and operational abilities that resulted in 9/11. If they anchored themselves in a lawless Iraq, would their lethality towards the United States be even greater or lesser than it was when they were in Taliban Afghanistan?
JB: I would say it would probably be greater, and for these reasons. Let’s remember that the Afghanistan, that was a sanctuary for al Qaeda and bin Laden, is a very, very underdeveloped, I dare say primitive country. Iraq is not. Iraq is a country that had and potentially still has a major industrial base, it has among Middle Eastern countries one of the most highly educated corps of scientists and engineers, people who were on their way, certainly in the early 1990’s, to developing nuclear weapons, even if that program, as we now know, fell by the wayside after the first Gulf War. Many of these people have left, but would some of them come back? You would then have to add to that the fact that this is an oil country, which even in the situation of a civil war, is exporting billions of dollars of oil to the world, and could potentially export much more. So I would say add to that the question of geography. We’re a thousand miles closer here in Baghdad to Western Europe and the United States than Mr. bin Laden and his followers were when they were in Afghanistan. So I think yes, it could be a serious problem. Whether that problem can be overcome in any foreseeable or acceptable period of time here, I don’t know. If we knew the answer to that, we’d be well on our way to deciding whether or not it’s worth staying here. But I think to deny that there is such a problem, or even simply to blame it on the Bush administration…
(Call dropped. End of Part 1)
HH: Mr. Burns, sorry, we dropped you there as you were…I just need about ten more minutes if I can hold you for that long.
JB: Yeah, sure.
HH: Great. You were talking about that al Qaeda is real in Anbar, and they would pose problems for us, and it’s not a Bush administration figment, I think you were saying.
JB: I’m not sure where we…you still had me on the line when I was talking about why Iraq is different to Afghanistan?
HH: Yeah, but…I got most of that…
JB: Yes.
HH: And you were, when you got cut off, you were saying that this is not made up by the Bush administration.
JB: So you know, we can all exhaust ourselves with questions of political accountability for this, and whether the Bush administration, post 9/11, made a huge mistake in moving on from an uncompleted war in Afghanistan to Iraq. But it seems to me that perhaps instead of exhausting our energies on that, it would be better to look at the situation as it actually is, set aside for time being, or for history, who is responsible for it, and come to some conclusions about what is best to do about it. And that would have to start from a recognition that it is a really serious problem. And then the question is what, if anything, can be done about it? Will leaving American troops here only exacerbate the problem, and exhaust the United States? Or would it hold out the prospect that the United States and its Iraqi partners could actually begin to knock al Qaeda back? That’s a very complex question, and as I said earlier, I consider it one of my great blessings that it’s my job to report on these things and not to decide on them.
HH: It’s extraordinarily well put. A couple of metrics, though. When I interviewed General Petraeus last week, he was reluctant to talk in terms of the number of al Qaeda or foreign terrorists killed in the last six months of the surge. What do you think that number is? How many al Qaeda are being killed by the surge?
JB: I would say the figure is in the hundreds.
HH: High hundreds or low hundreds?
JB: I would say it’s probably something in the nature of three to five hundred, cumulatively, since the surge began. Now I’ve not got that figure from the American military. I’m simply pulling together various estimates we’ve had from various parts of this offensive as to the people that they have killed. Now of course, that figure isn’t very helpful. You need to know are these people, you know, 17 and 18 year old recruits who have been paid $50 dollars to go and put a roadside bomb somewhere where it can blow up an American humvee? Or are they hard core? How many of the hard core have they got? I think they’ve had some success, and they’ve probably taken off the streets several dozen senior al Qaeda in Iraq linked terrorists. And that has to be significant. The problem is, as General Rick Lynch of the 3rd Infantry Division, who is presently in charge of the surge operations on the southern approaches to Baghdad has said, al Qaeda in Iraq is a hydra. It is a many headed monster which seems to be able to regenerate its heads when they’re cut off. And that’s been the case for a very long time, as General Lynch knows. He was the command spokesman in his previous assignment here. And many was the time wherein I attended briefings by General Lynch in that role, where he produced charts indicating how many first, second and third tier al Qaeda operatives had been killed or captured. And that was three years ago. So you know, it seems that no matter how many are killed or captured, this thing managed to regenerate.
HH: Now John Burns, some argue that withdrawal will stop the momentum for al Qaeda’s recruitment, that we are, our presence there is, in fact, breeding terrorists. Do you agree with that?
JB: Well, I think there’s no doubt that there’s some element of truth to that. But I don’t think that that alone is keeping or sustaining the al Qaeda presence here. As a matter of fact, if you talk, if you look at what’s happened in Anbar, for example, the tribal sheiks in Anbar who have shifted their position on this war, and in effect now put themselves in an alliance with the United States and Iraqi forces against al Qaeda, they’re doing that partly because of al Qaeda’s brutality, but also because of their fears for what this might portend beyond an American presence. In short, whilst they’ve got American troops here, they’re very happy to have them go after al Qaeda, because most Iraqis, and certainly most tribal sheiks, do not want to live in an Islamic caliphate of the kind that Mr. Zarqawi, who was killed a little over a year ago in an American bombing strike, the former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, declared his intentions. As a matter of fact, the principal al Qaeda front operation here now calls it the Islamic state of Iraq. It’s pretty clear what those people intend. This, for all the religiosity we have seen in the past three or four years, was under Saddam Hussein, and remains a strongly secular society. Most Iraqis, most Iraqis, crave in their lives much of the same things that Americans do. They want to see economic progress. They want to see a degree of liberty. Of course they want also to preserve and protect their religion. But they do not want to live in a Taliban state.
HH: Mr. Burns, what is Iran’s role right now? What is, as you understand it, the game that they’re playing? What did they want to happen there?
JB: Well, it’s very difficult to read it, and I know that American officials who are dealing with this are absolutely perplexed. You would think that Iran would have, as much as any state in the region, an interest in stability in Iraq, and an interest in sustaining the first Shiite co-religionist, if you will, government in Iraq in hundreds of years. But what they’re actually doing is they are definitely, according to the intelligence that the American military passes to us, they are fueling, if you will, this country on its way to a civil war, and they are certainly responsible for providing the weapons technology and actual weapons in the form of what are known as explosively formed penetrators. That’s a particularly powerful form of bomb that have killed now scores of American troops. So how do we understand all of this? In two ways. Number one, Iran, as you know, is a country divided against itself. It has ayatollahs, extremist ayatollahs in many respects, who are in overall charge of the government. It has other ayatollahs who are more moderate. You have Islamic guards who are extremists, and you have a force, the Quds force, which is an elite force which appears to be the force that the ayatollahs, the extremist ayatollahs in Iran are using to, if you will, fuel the war in Iraq by funneling not just weapons and weapons technology and money, but actual agents into Iraq, according to what the American military has told, as they’ve captured some of them, to actually direct Shiite extremist activities, including death squads, including in February of this year, as I recall, an attack in the city of Karbala about 80 miles southwest of Baghdad, in which American soldiers, you’ll forgive me here, but my recollection is that there five of them, were abducted and killed by people wearing fake American military uniforms, and driving fake American military vehicles. This was an operation, so the American military tells us, which was conceived, directed, financed by the Iranian Quds force. So what is Iran up to here? It looks very much as though their interest in striking back at the great Satan, the United States, humiliating if they can the United States in Iraq, matters more to them on balance than creating a stable Shiite led government in Baghdad.
HH: When you talk with American military and diplomatic personnel there, John Burns, do they foresee some sort of military clash between Iran and the United States?
JB: No, I think it’s fair to say they don’t. They would say, of course, that they will do whatever they are directed by the president and Congress of the United States to do. But from everything I know of the American military commanders here, the last thing they want is any kind of military engagement with Iran, and for one very obvious reason. They have their hands absolutely full here. They have an army which is stretched to the point of exhaustion. I read the other day somewhere that something like 70% of the armored vehicles in the United States armed forces are now in Iraq. One indication of that is that if there were a rapid withdrawal, or helter skelter withdrawal, you’d have an army, an United States Army which would be stripped of much of its fighting vehicles. So do they want another war on their hands? They absolutely do not. They want to do the best job they an possibly do here, and they want to get home. How often do you hear American generals and American officers say that? Nobody wants to come home more than we do.
HH: And do you expect, though, that the nuclear ambitions of Iran will lead the Bush administration, do you hear people speculating about strikes on the nuclear facilities?
JB: You know, that’s way, as the military here likes to say, out of may lane. Though I’m sitting here in Baghdad, probably only about an hour’s flying time west of Tehran, and although I have been in Iran a number of times under the rule of the ayatollahs, I find that one extremely difficult to contemplate. But I do think that there are some things that are easy to state about this, and I think everybody who bothers to acquaint himself to the realities would understand it, that a proliferation of nuclear weapons in this region would be an extremely, extremely dangerous thing. And the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Iran would have a particular danger, because of the hostility of the ayatollahs to the West in the first place, and to the state of Israel in the second, and especially a president of Iran who has declared that it is his desire, his intent, to wipe Israel off the face of the map. So clearly, you know, an unstable policy like Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would be a development of the most frightened proportions. What can you do about that? Is it too late? Is the genie dropped out of the bottle? I was in India and Pakistan when those two countries tested nuclear weapons, and in effect, became nuclear weapons states, and I remember very well the sanctions that were placed on India and Pakistan in the immediate aftermath of those weapons tests in 1998, and how now, less than 10 years later, the United States is in harness with both those countries, and most of the sanctions then imposed have been withdrawn. So it’s difficult, is it not, to develop a coherent policy here in which some states, even if they are a lot more responsible we may judge than Iran are allowed to acquire nuclear weapons and others are not. I don’t pretend to have any answers to this, although I will say is, as I say to my children who are now well into their 20’s, I think they’re growing up into a world a lot more dangerous than I did, and I grew up into the world of the Cold War. And we thought that was dangerous enough.
HH: I want to wrap up by asking you just that kind of a question. When you’re sitting around and having a drink with your friends or your wife or your kids, and you’re an Englishman, and you know, what Gordon Brown has said in the last couple of weeks, and MI5 says you’ve got 2,000 jihadists running around London, what do you think the world’s going to look like in ten years? What’s the best case and the worst case out there, as you contemplate all the different moving parts in this clash of jihadist Islamist extremism and the West?
JB: I have to say I find it…and everything not to say quite frightening, and you know, I’ve learned one thing in my 30 years working for an American newspaper, and thus acquiring some kind of understanding, I hope, about the United States, and that is the can do spirit, that the only useful thing to do in the face of this kind of threat is to ask yourself what can we do about it? America has a genius, in my view, for not sitting down and moping about its forlorn state, but of actually doing something about it. And we will see the United States do something about this. I think that our focus needs to be on what is it that is within our control? There’s only so much that you can accomplish by force of arms. I was with General Nixon, who’s command of American troops in North Iraq yesterday, and he said you know, we haven’t advanced our security one little bit by killing people here. He meant, of course, that what you have to do is try and change hearts and minds. I think there are limits to what you can do with force of arms. We know that now. And we have to look at various aspects of American and Western policy in the world, and see where we can change that. And the most obvious place to change it would be in bringing some kind of peace between the Arabs and the Israelis, between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And God knows that’s a difficult enough problem. But I think if we could start there, and broaden out beyond that, then we would begin to have an answer to Islamic extremism.
HH: Do you think Hamas and Hezbollah, though, are at all inclined to want that with Israel, John Burns?
JB: Say again?
HH: Do you think that Hamas and Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in the north, in Lebanon, are at all inclined to want co-existence, peaceful with Israel?
JB: Well, that’s certainly an open question. And again, I have to plead that that’s outside my lane. I worked in those two countries, Israel and Lebanon, and in the West Bank and Gaza, and I can’t claim to have any inside knowledge any more, I would say, than most of the people who are listening to your program. I think the answer would be that of course, these aren’t the most extreme elements, Islamic extreme elements, probably do not want peace. But my sense is that we should work from one observable fact there as elsewhere, and that is that most people, most people, including most Palestinians, most Iraqis, do not want to live in Terminator world. They want, broadly speaking, the same things that we do. As long as that’s the case, as long as that’s the case, a policy that reaches out to those people will be a policy that brings us some hope.
HH: Let’s conclude by asking you about the American military, the trooper, and the Marines who are…you know, the privates and the corporals and the sergeants there. There was a piece in the New Republic last week by a Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Have you had a chance to read that, or read about the controversy, John Burns?
JB: I did not, no. Tell me about it.
HH: Well, he attributed to himself, and to his fellow troopers, a cruelty and indifference to cruelty that shocked a lot of people, and now there’s an investigation into whether or not his observations were in fact truthful, and we don’t know the answer to that. But when you observe the American troops, A) how are their morale, and B) what do they think about this war, and about the Iraqi people at the level of the people doing the hardest fighting?
JB: Look, war is a brutalizing thing. It is an ugly thing. My own father was a fighter pilot during World War II. And when I went out to cover wars around the world, he cautioned me about being too quick and ready in my judgments. He said unless you’ve fought a war, you don’t know what it does to people. And he was speaking for an air force, the Royal Air Force, which firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and killed more people, as I recall in those two cities, than were killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So that’s my first response to that, that if there has been brutality by American troops here, that would be nothing new in war. As for the morale of American troops, I think I can give you an answer to that, because I was only, a couple of days ago, in an American fort, in effect, a control base on the edge of the city of Samarra, which is as lawless and as al Qaeda dominated a place as you will find in Iraq, as I mentioned earlier, about sixty miles north of Baghdad, the place where a Shiite shrine was bombed in February of 2006 with catastrophic effects in terms of a tidal wave of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiia across the country. So there I was with a platoon of American troops, led by a young man who was about a captain, who was about to receive a silver star for bravery in a battle inside Samarra. And I asked him what do you and the thirty men who were standing in line waiting for the silver star ceremony with him, what are you fighting for here? And I can tell you one thing, they’re not fighting for any grand mission. The days of that are gone. They don’t spend their hours keenly watching CNN and Fox News for the latest twists and turns in the debate in Congress. They watch movies, they watch WWF, they watch NASCAR. And when you ask them what you’re fighting for, they’ll tell you they’re fighting for the man to the left of them, the man to the right of them, they’re fighting to get home safely. They’re fighting for the unit, they’re fighting to protect and save themselves.
HH: And do they appreciate the Congressional debate? And when you talk to them, and their officers, do they think it’s helpful to what they’re trying to do?
JB: Well, if you talk to most of the fighting men, the enlisted men, they’re really not very much concerned about that. They’re concerned about, in the case of the unit that I was talking to, they came here on a twelve month hitch, they’ve done twelve months, they were extended to fifteen, so they have another three months to go, and their minds are fixed on those last three months, on getting through those last three months, and getting out. If you talk to officers in command headquarters around country, people who have had more time, and who are not at the sharp end of this war, yes, of course, they do follow the debate in Congress, and I would say the predominant opinion, not if by an means the exclusive opinion, because there are all the shades of opinion that you find in the United States, you’ll find here in the American armed forces. But I would say the predominant opinion appears to be, at least amongst the middle to senior levels of the officer corps here, that we came here, we paid a very high price, 3,600 men killed, 26 or 27,000 men, women wounded, let’s see if we can’t accomplish something here. They certainly do not like the idea of, to put it in the pejorative, cutting and running. They think that they can still make a crucial difference, they think it’s worth persisting here, they would just like a little bit more time. But they recognize, and this is undeniable, when you talk to most of these officers, they understand how the United States system works, and they understand what the Congress of the United States is elected to do. And they will accept, of course they will accept, whatever decision is made. They understand, because they’re paying the price, they are…you know, I was in a unit headquarters in Camp Spiker north of Tikrit for the last three days, and as we walked to the helicopter to fly back to Baghdad yesterday morning, we paused before the memorial board. And this is for the 82nd Airborne Division, one of the most famous units in the United States Army, now at about the twelve month mark of a fifteen month deployment, with something in the nature of 20,000 men, and that board has 56 names on it of men killed here in Iraq. And the average age, they told me, was as I recall about 21 years old. And you look at those faces and those dog tags staring out at you from the memorial wall, and you’d have to be, have ice water in your veins not to ask yourself is this worth it. Is what’s going to be accomplished or not accomplished here worth the lives of these young men? I don’t have a ready answer to that. And I think the wise thing to do is frankly to show some modesty in respect to that question. And I ask myself when I looked at those faces, what would they be saying to us now? Having given their lives for this, what would they want? Some of them, no doubt, I think would say get out of this place now. Others, as one would, might suspect, would say I went to Iraq knowing I could pay this price. Having paid the price, I would like to see the mission accomplished. As I’ve said before, thank God that it’s not my responsibility to make the finite decisions on this. My heart goes out, as it does to those soldiers out there in the 120 degree heat of the Iraqi desert fighting this sometimes impossible war, my heart also goes out to those 400 plus members of the United States Congress and the 100 members of the Senate who have to decide this thing. I don’t think in my lifetime there has been an issue of public policy quite as vexed as this.
HH: You know, John Burns, I’m imposing on you, and I apologize. It’s just so fascinating and it’s deeply, I think, informative, so I want to just ask you about those quiet conversations with your Iraqi friends, the people who serve the Bureau, who you’ve become friends with over your many years in Baghdad. What do they think is going to happen here? How fearful are they of the future?
JB: Very fearful, very fearful indeed. We’ve had much reason in the New York Times bureau in Baghdad in the past two weeks, more reason than usual, to thing about this, because we lost one of our Iraqi reporter/interpreters, killed two weeks ago today on his way to work in Baghdad, executed, in effect, in a professional manner which left little doubt that the people who were doing it were in one way involved with the insurgency. I don’t think it was a purely criminal enterprise. The young man who died was 23 years old, and full of life, and full of love for America, and full of hope for his own future. So we have talked more than we normally would about this question. I would say the prevailing opinion amongst the Iraqis I know best is they are very scared, very scared. They wonder whether they will live out each day. With, almost without exception, they are all hoping to get out of Iraq, to get to Jordan or Syria, or beyond that to the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom. That’s becoming an increasingly difficult venture for them. Their lives are filled with fear, and with very little hope. And when they contemplate the possible early withdrawal of American troops, of course, in the main, not exclusively, some feel that it’s better that Iraqis settle this amongst themselves. But in the main, those Iraqis feel that a withdrawal of American troops would very much increase the level of danger that they and their families face.
HH: Can we abandon, John Burns, can we abandon these Iraqis the way we abandoned the Cambodians to Pol Pot or the South Vietnamese to the North? I mean, doesn’t that strike you as something we simply cannot do?
JB: Well, if you ask me that as a personal matter, as somebody who has spent five years here and made many friends here, and come to admire greatly the Iraqis for their, their fortitude in enduring these miseries, it fills me with dread to think that they would be left to face the consequences of all of this without our, and I mean, by the way, American and not only American but British support as well. The British are much closer to the exit as far as I can tell than American troops are. So I am filled with dread about that, and wish that I could give these young Iraqis more encouragement than I can. And frankly, the best advice, and I think the most wise advice that anybody could give an Iraqi faced with that situation would be that if he could get his family to safety now, it would probably be a wise thing to do. Easier said than done. Visas are extremely difficult to get even for neighboring Arab countries. And very few of these people have any savings at all…in 2003, at a time when doctors in Iraq were earning $3 dollars a month. Most of them, speaking of the people that we employ, are supporting not just themselves and their own families, but whole extended families, and their salaries are exhausted, very often, before the month is through. So to contemplate them moving a family, even their nuclear families out of this country, even if they can get the visas, is extremely difficult. It’s a completely nightmarish situation for them, and obviously, I would that however we in the West resolve this, we don’t forget them.
HH: Asking, I’ve asked you this before, and I’ll ask it again to exit, knowing what we know now, would you have counseled the invasion to occur in ’03?
JB: Well, let me answer the question in a slightly different way. I think that people like myself, who were here before the overthrow of Saddam, were absolutely mesmerized, and I’m even inclined to say obsessed with one aspect of this society, and that was the terror that Saddam Hussein inflicted on his own people, and that I think we thought, I know I thought, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would bring an end to that terror, and would bring hope for the first time in a generation to Iraqis. I think those of us who felt that should have studied harder, and tried to acquaint ourselves more with the history of this country, and realized that beneath the carapace of terror laid a deeply fractured, deeply dysfunctional society in which Sunni, Shiia and Kurds have been locked together, and held in some relative stability only by at the point of a gun. Had we known all that, had we fully weighed all of that, I think that we might have reckoned then that ghastly as the terror of Saddam Hussein was, there was something even more ghastly that could ensure. I personally am too close to this now to be able to make any kind of judgment about that, and I think the judgment will depend on events yet to unfold. But I think that journalists, we who file mostly for 24 hour deadlines, need to learn a lesson, and I’m talking about myself, as much as anybody else here, and that we need to think very carefully when we’re cast into situations like this, and we become the messengers, if you will, the tribunes of the Western world, to write more about those sorts of things, the fractured society that lay beneath that carapace of terror, than just the terror itself.
HH: Was there any way, is it possible, do you think on that reflection, that however hard the last four years have been, was there any other way to get past Saddam? Or was it, and is there a possibility in your mind that it will all be worth it in the end?
JB: I guess the judgment on that will probably be something like 20-25 years out from now.
HH: Yeah.
JB: …the judgment that the Iraqi people will have to make. Right now, the remarkable thing is not that so many Iraqis look back on Saddam’s time with a sense of yearning, but that so many other Iraqis, namely Shiite Iraqis and Kurdish Iraqis, who were his principal victims, continue to believe that his overthrow was for the best. What history’s judgment about this will be extremely difficult to tell. But one thing we can be sure of is that it will have cost enormous numbers of lives, and it makes you wonder, looking back to the period of 2003 and before…
(Call dropped – End of Part 2)
JB: John Burns…
HH: Mr. Burns, I’m just calling back, it’s Hugh Hewitt, to say thank you for the hour. It’s been fascinating, we’ll play it in its entirety on Monday, and I hope in a few more months, we can get you back to do it again. It’s riveting radio.
JB: Well, thank you very much, and I enjoyed the chat.
HH: Thank you, John Burns.
JB: Bye bye.
HH: Bye bye.
End of interview.
BC
HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it’s been about six months since we spoke, and I gather you’re in Baghdad today?
JB: I am indeed.
HH: How long have you been back in Baghdad?
JB: About three months. We take long rotations here, and then we reward ourselves with nice long breaks back home in the United States, or in my case, in the United Kingdom.
HH: Well, there are three things I want to cover with you today, Mr. Burns. Where are we now in Iraq, in your view? Secondly, where Iraq might be in a couple of years, depending on a couple of developments that the United States might enact? And then finally, in hindsight, what we did right and what we did wrong over the last four years. But let’s start with what you see in Baghdad today. Is the surge working?
JB: I think there’s no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops are making a difference. They’re definitely making a difference in Baghdad. Some of the crucial indicators of the war, metrics as the American command calls them, have moved in a positive direction from the American, and dare I say the Iraqi point of view, fewer car bombs, fewer bombs in general, lower levels of civilian casualties, quite remarkably lower levels of civilian casualties. And add in what they call the Baghdad belts, that’s to say the approaches to Baghdad, particularly in Diyala Province to the northeast, to in the area south of Baghdad in Babil Province, and to the west of Baghdad in Anbar Province, there’s no doubt that al Qaeda has taken something of a beating.
HH: Now when General Petraeus returns in September to make his report, do you expect Petraeus to be completely candid with the American people about the good news and the bad news in Iraq?
JB: I think there’s no doubt that he’ll be candid. As a matter of fact, every time I’ve spoken to him about it, he talks about the need to be forthright, and as he puts it, he said we’re not going to be putting lipstick on a pig. I think that’s a fairly, that’s military jargon which most Americans will understand. David Petraeus is a man who’s had a remarkably distinguished military career, and he is very clear that he thinks his responsibilities lie not to the White House alone, but to the White House and the Congress conjointly, and through them to the American people. I don’t think that this is just a profession, a claim. I think he really intends that, and he’s been very careful not to make commitments at the moment as to what he’s going to say, though we may guess it. And I think he’s going to say that the surge is having its effects, it hasn’t turned the tide of the war, there’s been too little time for it, and I think he and Ambassador Crocker, who will be his partner in that September report, are going to say one thing very clearly, and that is a quick, early withdrawal of American troops of the kind that is being argued by Nancy Pelosi, for example, would very likely lead to catastrophic levels of violence here. And in that, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will be saying something which is pretty broadly shared by people who live and work here, I have to say. The removal of American troops would very likely, we believe from all indications, lead to much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence, beyond anything we’ve seen to date.
HH: Mr. Burns, some anti-war critics have begun to attack General Petraeus as being not credible and not trustworthy for a variety of reasons, one he gave me an interview, he’s given other people interviews that they consider to be partisan, whatever. Do you believe he’ll be as trustworthy as anyone else speaking on the war?
JB: I do. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and there definitely was in the, in the Vietnam war, there was a failure of senior generals and the joint chiefs of staff to speak frankly about the Vietnam war early enough. There has definitely been some Pollyannaish character to the reporting of some of the generals here over the past three or four years, although in my own view, knowing virtually all of those generals, I don’t think that that was out of fealty to the White House or Mr. Rumsfeld. It’s a difficult and complex question which we really don’t have time to discuss here. But to speak of General Petraeus in particular, General Petraeus is 54 years old. Let’s look at this just simply as a matter of career, beyond the matter of principle on which I think we could also say we could expect him to make a forthright report. At 54, General Petraeus is a young four star general, who could expect to have as much as ten more years in the military. And he has every reason to give a forthright and frank report on this. And he says, and he says this insistently, that he will give a forthright, straightforward report, and if the people in Washington don’t like it, then they can find somebody else who will give his forthright, straightforward report. He is not without options on a personal basis, General Petraeus, and I think he, from everything I’ve learned from him, sees both a professional, in the first place, and personal imperative to state the truth as he sees it about this war.
HH: Speaking more broadly now, in the American higher command, is there optimism that the surge, given enough time, will bring the kind of stability to Iraq that we all hope it achieves?
JB: You know, optimism is a word which is rarely used around here. The word they would use is realism. You have to look at what the plan is. The plan is that with the surge, aimed primarily at al Qaeda, who are responsible for most of the spectacular attacks, the major suicide bombings, for example, that have driven the sectarian warfare here, the belief is, or the hope is, that with the surge, they can knock al Qaeda back, they can clear areas which have been virtually sanctuaries for al Qaeda, northeast, south, west and northwest of Baghdad, and in Baghdad itself, and then have Iraqi troops move in behind them. The problem here is time. How much time does the U.S. military have now, according to the American political timetable, to accomplish this? I think most generals would say, indeed have said, most serving current generals here have said that a drawdown, which took American troops from the 160,00 level they’re at now quickly down to 100,000 or 80,000 over the next, shall we say, year to eighteen months, that’s too fast. If you do that, I think they would say, though they don’t put it quite this frankly, that this war will be lost for sure. Given a little bit more time, they think that it is realistic to think that the Iraqi forces can move in behind them, and can take over the principal responsibilities for the war. The problem is, of course, that American generals have been saying this now for four years, and as we know, the Congress is beginning to run out of patience with that. But I think that they have a good plan now, at least if there is any plan that could save the situation here, any plan that could bring a reasonably successful end to the American enterprise here, it’s probably the plan they have right now.
HH: Now John Burns, a military historian was writing this week that he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda’s fighters, as well as perhaps radical Shiia militias prior to the Petraeus report. Have you heard warnings or concerns about such a thing?
JB: (pause) Hello?
HH: Yes, Mr. Burns, maybe you didn’t hear that.
JB: Sorry, you were breaking up quite badly, as you have been at several points during our discussion.
HH: Okay, I’ll try it again. A military historian wrote this week that he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda and radical Shiia fighters in the next weeks running up to the September report. Have you heard warnings about that, concerns about that kind of…
JB: Yeah, it’s not an original thought. As a matter of fact, it’s a thought we’ve heard expressed by General Petraeus and other commanders here, and you don’t have to be a crystal ball gazer or a seer to understand the risks in that. Indeed, there have been one or two attempts to pull off exactly that. The fear has been among the generals here that a major, spectacular attack, aimed for example at the Green Zone, the government and military command complex in the center of Baghdad, of the kinds that was mounted during the Tet offensive when, as you’ll recall, Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops got right inside the American embassy. That kind of attack would have an…whatever its consequences here, would have an enormous impact and possibly fatal impact from the American military point of view on the balance of opinion in the Congress. You’ll forgive me, I have American attack helicopters flying overhead right now over our compound here in Baghdad.
HH: Sure.
JB: There was one attempt already to pull off an attack of that kind. It was not on the Green Zone, but on an American military base southwest of Baghdad, when a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of high explosives, that’s by quick calculation, we’re talking about more than five tons of high explosives, got very close to what they call the wire of an American base in which there were several hundred American troops. A wary gunner in a watchtower, an American gunner, spotted the truck, and killed or fired at the driver, who got out of the truck wearing a suicide vest, as it happens, and the truck did not explode. Had it exploded, there could have been a repeat of what happened in Lebanon in 1982, when as you will recall, a truck bombing of the Marine barracks residential complex near Beiruit airport killed, as I recall, 249 Marines, and speeded Ronald Reagan in his decision to pull American Marines out of Beirut. So yes, there is a definite concern about that, and there has been a tightening of what the American military calls force protection, that is to say I guess self-evidently, the efforts that the force spends to protect itself in respect of that threat.
HH: When we spoke in February, you told us about the killing that had been underway in Adamiya, one of the places where sectarian violence in Baghdad had really flared in October. What’s your assessment of the Shiia on Sunni violence level in Baghdad six months into the surge?
JB: It is reduced, and it’s reduced primarily, as far as we can see, because of the increment, and I’m talking here of a virtual doubling of American troop strength in Baghdad, to speak only the neighborhood in which the New York Times operates here, the Rusafa neighborhood on the east side of the Tigris River, we here now have American troops quartered about a half a mile away from us for the first time in three years. So when you put American boots on the ground, you definitely have an inhibiting effect on this, and we’ve seen that in falling levels of sectarian violence. Where you don’t have American boots on the ground inside Baghdad, you see higher levels of sectarian violence. So I would that on the whole, the situation is somewhat better than it was, which is exactly what you would have expected by introducing a significant increase of American combat troops.
HH: John Burns, that means it’s down, but is there any kind of movement that you can see that would suggest that when, that the Iraqis are coming to their own conclusion that they’ve go to work through other means than violence, is there a lowering of the hatred level there in Baghdad?
JB: Well, of course, that would be what the American military would call the most crucial metric of all. If we could see that, then we would begin to see the end of the war. Now the fact is that the Iraqi people are, of course, exhausted with the violence. The question is at what point does that begin to translate into the kind of stepping up that would make a change in the warfare, specifically the flow of intelligence to the Iraqi and American militaries here, which would enable them to go after the people who are primarily responsible, whether it’s Shiite death squads or its suicide bombers, mostly Sunni suicide bombers. The intelligence flow, we’re told, is a good deal better, very much better than it was. This is an intelligence driven war, but the American military will tell you that they still don’t have enough of it. They have quite a good flow of intelligence, which has allowed them to have some spectacular successes, including one just last night in Karbala, southwest of Baghdad, the holy city where they went after a Shiite militia death squad leader. And this happens virtually every night, usually special forces operations, American led. They’ve have some success with that. So that’s really the key metric. When the Iraqi people’s exhaustion with this war begins to express itself in a full flow of intelligence to the Iraqi and American military, then you will see real progress in the war. Up until now, it’s much better, but it’s still, according to the American military, still not nearly enough to make it a crucial difference.
HH: Now another metric is what the political elite of a country says off the record. And you have those conversations with the Maliki government, with the opposition, with the people in parliament, etc. What do you hear from those conversations, John Burns? Are they beginning to think that it is possible to see a functioning government and a multi-party system that relies on other than guns?
JB: No, I would say that’s probably the most depressing or discouraging aspect of the entire situation. I think it’s probably fair to say that the Iraqi political leaders, Sunni, Shiia, Kurd in the main, are somewhat further apart now than they were six months ago. In other words, the Bush administration’s hope that the military surge would be accompanied by what they called a political surge, a movement towards some sort of national reconciliation, uniting around a kind of national compact, that has simply not occurred. Indeed, the gulf between the Shiite and Sunni leaders in the government is probably wider than it has ever been. There’s a great deal of recrimination. There’s hardly a day when the Sunnis do not, as they did again today, threaten to withdraw from the government altogether. There’s virtually no progress on the key benchmarks, as the Bush administration calls them, matters like a comprehensive oil law that will settle the issue of how oil revenues, which account for 90% of government revenues here, will in future be divided and spent between the various communities, and many other issues, eighteen of them, benchmarks identified by the Congress, there’s very little progress on those benchmarks. Where there is some progress is at the grass roots level, some progress, though we’re beginning to see tribal leaders, in particular, in some of the most heavily congested war areas, beginning to stand up and say they’ve had enough of it, and to volunteer to put forth their young men, either to join the Iraqi police or army, or to join in tribal auxiliaries, or levees if you will. That’s probably the most encouraging political sign. But at the Baghdad level, unfortunately, the United States still does not have an effective political partner.
HH: One of the arguments for those favoring a timeline for withdrawal that’s written in stone is that it will oblige the Iraqi political class to get serious about such things as the oil revenue division. Do you believe that’s an accurate argument?
JB: Well, you would think it would be so, wouldn’t you, that the threat of withdrawal of American troops, and the risk of a slide into catastrophic levels of violence, much higher than we’ve already seen, would impel the Iraqi leadership to move forward. But there’s a conundrum here. There’s a paradox. That’s to say the more that the Democrats in the Congress lead the push for an early withdrawal, the more Iraqi political leaders, particularly the Shiite political leaders, but the Sunnis as well, and the Kurds, are inclined to think that this is going to be settled, eventually, in an outright civil war, in consequence of which they are very, very unlikely or reluctant, at present, to make major concessions. They’re much more inclined to kind of hunker down. So in effect, the threats from Washington about a withdrawal, which we might have hoped would have brought about greater political cooperation in face of the threat that would ensue from that to the entire political establishment here, has had, as best we can gauge it, much more the opposite effect, of an effect that persuading people well, if the Americans are going, there’s absolutely no…and we’re going to have to settle this by a civil war, why should we make concessions on that matter right now? For example, to give you only one isolated exception, why should the Shiite leadership, in their view, make major concessions about widening the entry point for former Baathists into the government, into the senior levels of the military leadership, that’s to say bringing in high ranking Sunnis into the government and the army and the police, who themselves, the Sunnis, are in the main former stalwarts of Saddam’s regime. Why would the Shiites do that if they believe that in the end, they’re going to have to fight a civil war? This is not to reprove people in the Congress who think that the United States has spent enough blood and treasure here. It’s just a reality that that’s the way this debate seems to be being read by many Iraqi politicians.
HH: Would a, John Burns, a contrary approach yield the also counterintuitive result that if Congress and the United States said we’re there for two or three more years at this level, would that assist the political settlement, in your view, coming about?
JB: Unfortunately, I think the answer to that is probably not, and that’s something that General Casey and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker now, General Petraeus’ partner, if you will, are very wary of. They understand that there has to be something of a fire lit under the feet of the Iraqi leaders. It’s a paradox, it’s a conundrum, which is almost impossible to resolve. Now I think the last thing that you need is an Iraqi leadership which is already inclined to passivity on the matters, the questions that seem to matter most in terms of a national reconciliation here, the last thing they need is to be told, in effect, the deadline has been moved back three years. I would guess the way, if you will, to vector all of this would be to find some sort of solution, indeed it was the benchmark solution, which would say to them if you come together and you work on these benchmarks, then you will continue to have our support. But it seems to me that the mood in Congress has moved beyond that. The mood in Congress, as I read it from here, at least those who are leading the push for the withdrawal, are not much interested anymore in incremental progress by the Iraqi government. They’ve come to the conclusion that this war is lost, that no foreseeable movement by the Iraqi leaders will be enough to justify the continued investment of lives and dollars here by the United States, and that it’s time to pull out. And of course, you can make a strong argument to that effect.
HH: Do you believe that, John Burns, that the war is lost?
JB: No, I don’t, actually. I think the war is close to lost, but I don’t think that all hope is extinguished, and I do think, as do many of my colleagues in the media here, that an accelerated early withdrawal, something which reduced American troops, even if they were placed in large bases out in the desert to, say, something like 60-80,000 over a period of six to nine months, and in effect, leaving the fighting in the cities and the approaches to the cities to the Iraqis, I think the result of that would, in effect, be a rapid, a rapid progress towards an all-out civil war. And the people who are urging that kind of a drawdown, I think, have to take that into account. That’s not to say, I have to say, that that should be enough to inhibit those politicians who make that argument, because they could very well ask if that’s true, can those who argue for a continued high level of American military involvement here assure us that we wouldn’t come to the same point three or four years, and perhaps four or five thousand American soldiers killed later? In other words, we might only be putting off the evil day. It seems to me that’s where this discussion really has to focus. Can those who argue for staying here, can they offer any reasonable hope that three, two, three, four years out, the risk of a decline into cataclysmic civil war would be any less? If the answer is no they can’t, then it seems to me that strengthens the argument of those who say well, we might as well withdraw fairly quickly now.
HH: Now you’ve reported some very tough places, Sarajevo, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and after the liberation from the Taliban, and you’ve won Pulitzers for that. When you say cataclysmic civil war, what do you mean in terms of what you’ve seen before? What kind of violence do you imagine would break out after precipitous withdrawal?
JB: Well, let’s look at what’s happened already as a benchmark. Nobody really knows how many people have died here, but I would guess that in terms of the civilian population, it’s probably not less than 100-150,000, and it could be higher than that. I don’t think it’s as high as the 700,000 that some estimates have suggested, but I think it’s, and I know for a fact, that the sort of figures that were being discussed amongst senior American officials here, as a potential, should there be an early withdrawal and a progress to an all-out civil war, they’re talking about the possibility of as many as a million Iraqis dying. Now of course, that is suppositional. It’s entirely hypothetical. How could we possibly know? But I think you couldn’t rule out that possibility. And the question then arises, catastrophic as the effect on Iraq and the region would be, you know, what would be the effect on American credibility in the world, American power in the world, and America’s sense of itself? These are extremely difficult issues to resolve, and I can’t say, sitting here in Baghdad, that I have any particular wisdom about what the right course would be. And fortunately, as a reporter, I’m not paid money to offer that kind of wisdom, only to observe what I see. And there are days when I thank God that I’m not sitting in the United States Senate or the United States House of Representatives, with the responsibility of putting the ballot in the box on this.
HH: In his recent speech in Charleston, President Bush argued that to withdraw would be to empower al Qaeda in Anbar Province, and to allow them to set up a base there. What do you make of that projection, John Burns?
JB: Well, I think it’s self-evident. Whatever we may make of the original intent of coming here, if the United States did not have a problem with Islamic extremism in Iraq before 2003, it certainly does now. You only have to look at the pronouncements of Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri, his deputy, to see that they regard Iraq now as being, if you will, the front line of the Islamic militant battle against the West. And so if American troops were withdrawn, I think that there would be a very serious risk that large parts of this country will fall under the sway of al Qaeda linked groups. Now we could debate what that exactly means. Al Qaeda’s a holding company. Does that mean that Mr. bin Laden would be able to direct affairs in Afghanistan? No, I don’t think he would. I don’t think he does now. But it would mean that Islamic extremists who bear the worst intent towards the United States would have a base similar to the base they had in Afghanistan before 9/11 from which to operate, and I think it’s very likely that they would then begin to want to expatriate their hatred of the United States in some way or another. In fact, it’s already the case, that there are parts of Iraq which are under the sway of groups that swear allegiance to al Qaeda. And just to speak of one of them, the city of Sumarra, where I was yesterday, it’s about sixty miles north of Baghdad, is definitely under the sway of al Qaeda right now. And that would likely get very much worse in the event of an accelerated withdrawal. So I don’t think it’s purely propaganda, political propaganda on the part of the Bush administration to say that there would be a major al Qaeda problem here. It seems to me it’s absolutely self-evident that there would be.
HH: Now given that you covered Afghanistan from the Taliban era, would they have a greater lethality anchored in Iraq than they did when they were anchored in Afghanistan, John Burns, al Qaeda I mean?
JB: I’m sorry, I missed that. Do you want to repeat that?
HH: Sure.
JB: I understood you were asking me about the lethality of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
HH: No, I was asking when al Qaeda was in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, they obviously developed potential and capabilities and operational abilities that resulted in 9/11. If they anchored themselves in a lawless Iraq, would their lethality towards the United States be even greater or lesser than it was when they were in Taliban Afghanistan?
JB: I would say it would probably be greater, and for these reasons. Let’s remember that the Afghanistan, that was a sanctuary for al Qaeda and bin Laden, is a very, very underdeveloped, I dare say primitive country. Iraq is not. Iraq is a country that had and potentially still has a major industrial base, it has among Middle Eastern countries one of the most highly educated corps of scientists and engineers, people who were on their way, certainly in the early 1990’s, to developing nuclear weapons, even if that program, as we now know, fell by the wayside after the first Gulf War. Many of these people have left, but would some of them come back? You would then have to add to that the fact that this is an oil country, which even in the situation of a civil war, is exporting billions of dollars of oil to the world, and could potentially export much more. So I would say add to that the question of geography. We’re a thousand miles closer here in Baghdad to Western Europe and the United States than Mr. bin Laden and his followers were when they were in Afghanistan. So I think yes, it could be a serious problem. Whether that problem can be overcome in any foreseeable or acceptable period of time here, I don’t know. If we knew the answer to that, we’d be well on our way to deciding whether or not it’s worth staying here. But I think to deny that there is such a problem, or even simply to blame it on the Bush administration…
(Call dropped. End of Part 1)
HH: Mr. Burns, sorry, we dropped you there as you were…I just need about ten more minutes if I can hold you for that long.
JB: Yeah, sure.
HH: Great. You were talking about that al Qaeda is real in Anbar, and they would pose problems for us, and it’s not a Bush administration figment, I think you were saying.
JB: I’m not sure where we…you still had me on the line when I was talking about why Iraq is different to Afghanistan?
HH: Yeah, but…I got most of that…
JB: Yes.
HH: And you were, when you got cut off, you were saying that this is not made up by the Bush administration.
JB: So you know, we can all exhaust ourselves with questions of political accountability for this, and whether the Bush administration, post 9/11, made a huge mistake in moving on from an uncompleted war in Afghanistan to Iraq. But it seems to me that perhaps instead of exhausting our energies on that, it would be better to look at the situation as it actually is, set aside for time being, or for history, who is responsible for it, and come to some conclusions about what is best to do about it. And that would have to start from a recognition that it is a really serious problem. And then the question is what, if anything, can be done about it? Will leaving American troops here only exacerbate the problem, and exhaust the United States? Or would it hold out the prospect that the United States and its Iraqi partners could actually begin to knock al Qaeda back? That’s a very complex question, and as I said earlier, I consider it one of my great blessings that it’s my job to report on these things and not to decide on them.
HH: It’s extraordinarily well put. A couple of metrics, though. When I interviewed General Petraeus last week, he was reluctant to talk in terms of the number of al Qaeda or foreign terrorists killed in the last six months of the surge. What do you think that number is? How many al Qaeda are being killed by the surge?
JB: I would say the figure is in the hundreds.
HH: High hundreds or low hundreds?
JB: I would say it’s probably something in the nature of three to five hundred, cumulatively, since the surge began. Now I’ve not got that figure from the American military. I’m simply pulling together various estimates we’ve had from various parts of this offensive as to the people that they have killed. Now of course, that figure isn’t very helpful. You need to know are these people, you know, 17 and 18 year old recruits who have been paid $50 dollars to go and put a roadside bomb somewhere where it can blow up an American humvee? Or are they hard core? How many of the hard core have they got? I think they’ve had some success, and they’ve probably taken off the streets several dozen senior al Qaeda in Iraq linked terrorists. And that has to be significant. The problem is, as General Rick Lynch of the 3rd Infantry Division, who is presently in charge of the surge operations on the southern approaches to Baghdad has said, al Qaeda in Iraq is a hydra. It is a many headed monster which seems to be able to regenerate its heads when they’re cut off. And that’s been the case for a very long time, as General Lynch knows. He was the command spokesman in his previous assignment here. And many was the time wherein I attended briefings by General Lynch in that role, where he produced charts indicating how many first, second and third tier al Qaeda operatives had been killed or captured. And that was three years ago. So you know, it seems that no matter how many are killed or captured, this thing managed to regenerate.
HH: Now John Burns, some argue that withdrawal will stop the momentum for al Qaeda’s recruitment, that we are, our presence there is, in fact, breeding terrorists. Do you agree with that?
JB: Well, I think there’s no doubt that there’s some element of truth to that. But I don’t think that that alone is keeping or sustaining the al Qaeda presence here. As a matter of fact, if you talk, if you look at what’s happened in Anbar, for example, the tribal sheiks in Anbar who have shifted their position on this war, and in effect now put themselves in an alliance with the United States and Iraqi forces against al Qaeda, they’re doing that partly because of al Qaeda’s brutality, but also because of their fears for what this might portend beyond an American presence. In short, whilst they’ve got American troops here, they’re very happy to have them go after al Qaeda, because most Iraqis, and certainly most tribal sheiks, do not want to live in an Islamic caliphate of the kind that Mr. Zarqawi, who was killed a little over a year ago in an American bombing strike, the former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, declared his intentions. As a matter of fact, the principal al Qaeda front operation here now calls it the Islamic state of Iraq. It’s pretty clear what those people intend. This, for all the religiosity we have seen in the past three or four years, was under Saddam Hussein, and remains a strongly secular society. Most Iraqis, most Iraqis, crave in their lives much of the same things that Americans do. They want to see economic progress. They want to see a degree of liberty. Of course they want also to preserve and protect their religion. But they do not want to live in a Taliban state.
HH: Mr. Burns, what is Iran’s role right now? What is, as you understand it, the game that they’re playing? What did they want to happen there?
JB: Well, it’s very difficult to read it, and I know that American officials who are dealing with this are absolutely perplexed. You would think that Iran would have, as much as any state in the region, an interest in stability in Iraq, and an interest in sustaining the first Shiite co-religionist, if you will, government in Iraq in hundreds of years. But what they’re actually doing is they are definitely, according to the intelligence that the American military passes to us, they are fueling, if you will, this country on its way to a civil war, and they are certainly responsible for providing the weapons technology and actual weapons in the form of what are known as explosively formed penetrators. That’s a particularly powerful form of bomb that have killed now scores of American troops. So how do we understand all of this? In two ways. Number one, Iran, as you know, is a country divided against itself. It has ayatollahs, extremist ayatollahs in many respects, who are in overall charge of the government. It has other ayatollahs who are more moderate. You have Islamic guards who are extremists, and you have a force, the Quds force, which is an elite force which appears to be the force that the ayatollahs, the extremist ayatollahs in Iran are using to, if you will, fuel the war in Iraq by funneling not just weapons and weapons technology and money, but actual agents into Iraq, according to what the American military has told, as they’ve captured some of them, to actually direct Shiite extremist activities, including death squads, including in February of this year, as I recall, an attack in the city of Karbala about 80 miles southwest of Baghdad, in which American soldiers, you’ll forgive me here, but my recollection is that there five of them, were abducted and killed by people wearing fake American military uniforms, and driving fake American military vehicles. This was an operation, so the American military tells us, which was conceived, directed, financed by the Iranian Quds force. So what is Iran up to here? It looks very much as though their interest in striking back at the great Satan, the United States, humiliating if they can the United States in Iraq, matters more to them on balance than creating a stable Shiite led government in Baghdad.
HH: When you talk with American military and diplomatic personnel there, John Burns, do they foresee some sort of military clash between Iran and the United States?
JB: No, I think it’s fair to say they don’t. They would say, of course, that they will do whatever they are directed by the president and Congress of the United States to do. But from everything I know of the American military commanders here, the last thing they want is any kind of military engagement with Iran, and for one very obvious reason. They have their hands absolutely full here. They have an army which is stretched to the point of exhaustion. I read the other day somewhere that something like 70% of the armored vehicles in the United States armed forces are now in Iraq. One indication of that is that if there were a rapid withdrawal, or helter skelter withdrawal, you’d have an army, an United States Army which would be stripped of much of its fighting vehicles. So do they want another war on their hands? They absolutely do not. They want to do the best job they an possibly do here, and they want to get home. How often do you hear American generals and American officers say that? Nobody wants to come home more than we do.
HH: And do you expect, though, that the nuclear ambitions of Iran will lead the Bush administration, do you hear people speculating about strikes on the nuclear facilities?
JB: You know, that’s way, as the military here likes to say, out of may lane. Though I’m sitting here in Baghdad, probably only about an hour’s flying time west of Tehran, and although I have been in Iran a number of times under the rule of the ayatollahs, I find that one extremely difficult to contemplate. But I do think that there are some things that are easy to state about this, and I think everybody who bothers to acquaint himself to the realities would understand it, that a proliferation of nuclear weapons in this region would be an extremely, extremely dangerous thing. And the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Iran would have a particular danger, because of the hostility of the ayatollahs to the West in the first place, and to the state of Israel in the second, and especially a president of Iran who has declared that it is his desire, his intent, to wipe Israel off the face of the map. So clearly, you know, an unstable policy like Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would be a development of the most frightened proportions. What can you do about that? Is it too late? Is the genie dropped out of the bottle? I was in India and Pakistan when those two countries tested nuclear weapons, and in effect, became nuclear weapons states, and I remember very well the sanctions that were placed on India and Pakistan in the immediate aftermath of those weapons tests in 1998, and how now, less than 10 years later, the United States is in harness with both those countries, and most of the sanctions then imposed have been withdrawn. So it’s difficult, is it not, to develop a coherent policy here in which some states, even if they are a lot more responsible we may judge than Iran are allowed to acquire nuclear weapons and others are not. I don’t pretend to have any answers to this, although I will say is, as I say to my children who are now well into their 20’s, I think they’re growing up into a world a lot more dangerous than I did, and I grew up into the world of the Cold War. And we thought that was dangerous enough.
HH: I want to wrap up by asking you just that kind of a question. When you’re sitting around and having a drink with your friends or your wife or your kids, and you’re an Englishman, and you know, what Gordon Brown has said in the last couple of weeks, and MI5 says you’ve got 2,000 jihadists running around London, what do you think the world’s going to look like in ten years? What’s the best case and the worst case out there, as you contemplate all the different moving parts in this clash of jihadist Islamist extremism and the West?
JB: I have to say I find it…and everything not to say quite frightening, and you know, I’ve learned one thing in my 30 years working for an American newspaper, and thus acquiring some kind of understanding, I hope, about the United States, and that is the can do spirit, that the only useful thing to do in the face of this kind of threat is to ask yourself what can we do about it? America has a genius, in my view, for not sitting down and moping about its forlorn state, but of actually doing something about it. And we will see the United States do something about this. I think that our focus needs to be on what is it that is within our control? There’s only so much that you can accomplish by force of arms. I was with General Nixon, who’s command of American troops in North Iraq yesterday, and he said you know, we haven’t advanced our security one little bit by killing people here. He meant, of course, that what you have to do is try and change hearts and minds. I think there are limits to what you can do with force of arms. We know that now. And we have to look at various aspects of American and Western policy in the world, and see where we can change that. And the most obvious place to change it would be in bringing some kind of peace between the Arabs and the Israelis, between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And God knows that’s a difficult enough problem. But I think if we could start there, and broaden out beyond that, then we would begin to have an answer to Islamic extremism.
HH: Do you think Hamas and Hezbollah, though, are at all inclined to want that with Israel, John Burns?
JB: Say again?
HH: Do you think that Hamas and Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in the north, in Lebanon, are at all inclined to want co-existence, peaceful with Israel?
JB: Well, that’s certainly an open question. And again, I have to plead that that’s outside my lane. I worked in those two countries, Israel and Lebanon, and in the West Bank and Gaza, and I can’t claim to have any inside knowledge any more, I would say, than most of the people who are listening to your program. I think the answer would be that of course, these aren’t the most extreme elements, Islamic extreme elements, probably do not want peace. But my sense is that we should work from one observable fact there as elsewhere, and that is that most people, most people, including most Palestinians, most Iraqis, do not want to live in Terminator world. They want, broadly speaking, the same things that we do. As long as that’s the case, as long as that’s the case, a policy that reaches out to those people will be a policy that brings us some hope.
HH: Let’s conclude by asking you about the American military, the trooper, and the Marines who are…you know, the privates and the corporals and the sergeants there. There was a piece in the New Republic last week by a Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Have you had a chance to read that, or read about the controversy, John Burns?
JB: I did not, no. Tell me about it.
HH: Well, he attributed to himself, and to his fellow troopers, a cruelty and indifference to cruelty that shocked a lot of people, and now there’s an investigation into whether or not his observations were in fact truthful, and we don’t know the answer to that. But when you observe the American troops, A) how are their morale, and B) what do they think about this war, and about the Iraqi people at the level of the people doing the hardest fighting?
JB: Look, war is a brutalizing thing. It is an ugly thing. My own father was a fighter pilot during World War II. And when I went out to cover wars around the world, he cautioned me about being too quick and ready in my judgments. He said unless you’ve fought a war, you don’t know what it does to people. And he was speaking for an air force, the Royal Air Force, which firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and killed more people, as I recall in those two cities, than were killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So that’s my first response to that, that if there has been brutality by American troops here, that would be nothing new in war. As for the morale of American troops, I think I can give you an answer to that, because I was only, a couple of days ago, in an American fort, in effect, a control base on the edge of the city of Samarra, which is as lawless and as al Qaeda dominated a place as you will find in Iraq, as I mentioned earlier, about sixty miles north of Baghdad, the place where a Shiite shrine was bombed in February of 2006 with catastrophic effects in terms of a tidal wave of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiia across the country. So there I was with a platoon of American troops, led by a young man who was about a captain, who was about to receive a silver star for bravery in a battle inside Samarra. And I asked him what do you and the thirty men who were standing in line waiting for the silver star ceremony with him, what are you fighting for here? And I can tell you one thing, they’re not fighting for any grand mission. The days of that are gone. They don’t spend their hours keenly watching CNN and Fox News for the latest twists and turns in the debate in Congress. They watch movies, they watch WWF, they watch NASCAR. And when you ask them what you’re fighting for, they’ll tell you they’re fighting for the man to the left of them, the man to the right of them, they’re fighting to get home safely. They’re fighting for the unit, they’re fighting to protect and save themselves.
HH: And do they appreciate the Congressional debate? And when you talk to them, and their officers, do they think it’s helpful to what they’re trying to do?
JB: Well, if you talk to most of the fighting men, the enlisted men, they’re really not very much concerned about that. They’re concerned about, in the case of the unit that I was talking to, they came here on a twelve month hitch, they’ve done twelve months, they were extended to fifteen, so they have another three months to go, and their minds are fixed on those last three months, on getting through those last three months, and getting out. If you talk to officers in command headquarters around country, people who have had more time, and who are not at the sharp end of this war, yes, of course, they do follow the debate in Congress, and I would say the predominant opinion, not if by an means the exclusive opinion, because there are all the shades of opinion that you find in the United States, you’ll find here in the American armed forces. But I would say the predominant opinion appears to be, at least amongst the middle to senior levels of the officer corps here, that we came here, we paid a very high price, 3,600 men killed, 26 or 27,000 men, women wounded, let’s see if we can’t accomplish something here. They certainly do not like the idea of, to put it in the pejorative, cutting and running. They think that they can still make a crucial difference, they think it’s worth persisting here, they would just like a little bit more time. But they recognize, and this is undeniable, when you talk to most of these officers, they understand how the United States system works, and they understand what the Congress of the United States is elected to do. And they will accept, of course they will accept, whatever decision is made. They understand, because they’re paying the price, they are…you know, I was in a unit headquarters in Camp Spiker north of Tikrit for the last three days, and as we walked to the helicopter to fly back to Baghdad yesterday morning, we paused before the memorial board. And this is for the 82nd Airborne Division, one of the most famous units in the United States Army, now at about the twelve month mark of a fifteen month deployment, with something in the nature of 20,000 men, and that board has 56 names on it of men killed here in Iraq. And the average age, they told me, was as I recall about 21 years old. And you look at those faces and those dog tags staring out at you from the memorial wall, and you’d have to be, have ice water in your veins not to ask yourself is this worth it. Is what’s going to be accomplished or not accomplished here worth the lives of these young men? I don’t have a ready answer to that. And I think the wise thing to do is frankly to show some modesty in respect to that question. And I ask myself when I looked at those faces, what would they be saying to us now? Having given their lives for this, what would they want? Some of them, no doubt, I think would say get out of this place now. Others, as one would, might suspect, would say I went to Iraq knowing I could pay this price. Having paid the price, I would like to see the mission accomplished. As I’ve said before, thank God that it’s not my responsibility to make the finite decisions on this. My heart goes out, as it does to those soldiers out there in the 120 degree heat of the Iraqi desert fighting this sometimes impossible war, my heart also goes out to those 400 plus members of the United States Congress and the 100 members of the Senate who have to decide this thing. I don’t think in my lifetime there has been an issue of public policy quite as vexed as this.
HH: You know, John Burns, I’m imposing on you, and I apologize. It’s just so fascinating and it’s deeply, I think, informative, so I want to just ask you about those quiet conversations with your Iraqi friends, the people who serve the Bureau, who you’ve become friends with over your many years in Baghdad. What do they think is going to happen here? How fearful are they of the future?
JB: Very fearful, very fearful indeed. We’ve had much reason in the New York Times bureau in Baghdad in the past two weeks, more reason than usual, to thing about this, because we lost one of our Iraqi reporter/interpreters, killed two weeks ago today on his way to work in Baghdad, executed, in effect, in a professional manner which left little doubt that the people who were doing it were in one way involved with the insurgency. I don’t think it was a purely criminal enterprise. The young man who died was 23 years old, and full of life, and full of love for America, and full of hope for his own future. So we have talked more than we normally would about this question. I would say the prevailing opinion amongst the Iraqis I know best is they are very scared, very scared. They wonder whether they will live out each day. With, almost without exception, they are all hoping to get out of Iraq, to get to Jordan or Syria, or beyond that to the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom. That’s becoming an increasingly difficult venture for them. Their lives are filled with fear, and with very little hope. And when they contemplate the possible early withdrawal of American troops, of course, in the main, not exclusively, some feel that it’s better that Iraqis settle this amongst themselves. But in the main, those Iraqis feel that a withdrawal of American troops would very much increase the level of danger that they and their families face.
HH: Can we abandon, John Burns, can we abandon these Iraqis the way we abandoned the Cambodians to Pol Pot or the South Vietnamese to the North? I mean, doesn’t that strike you as something we simply cannot do?
JB: Well, if you ask me that as a personal matter, as somebody who has spent five years here and made many friends here, and come to admire greatly the Iraqis for their, their fortitude in enduring these miseries, it fills me with dread to think that they would be left to face the consequences of all of this without our, and I mean, by the way, American and not only American but British support as well. The British are much closer to the exit as far as I can tell than American troops are. So I am filled with dread about that, and wish that I could give these young Iraqis more encouragement than I can. And frankly, the best advice, and I think the most wise advice that anybody could give an Iraqi faced with that situation would be that if he could get his family to safety now, it would probably be a wise thing to do. Easier said than done. Visas are extremely difficult to get even for neighboring Arab countries. And very few of these people have any savings at all…in 2003, at a time when doctors in Iraq were earning $3 dollars a month. Most of them, speaking of the people that we employ, are supporting not just themselves and their own families, but whole extended families, and their salaries are exhausted, very often, before the month is through. So to contemplate them moving a family, even their nuclear families out of this country, even if they can get the visas, is extremely difficult. It’s a completely nightmarish situation for them, and obviously, I would that however we in the West resolve this, we don’t forget them.
HH: Asking, I’ve asked you this before, and I’ll ask it again to exit, knowing what we know now, would you have counseled the invasion to occur in ’03?
JB: Well, let me answer the question in a slightly different way. I think that people like myself, who were here before the overthrow of Saddam, were absolutely mesmerized, and I’m even inclined to say obsessed with one aspect of this society, and that was the terror that Saddam Hussein inflicted on his own people, and that I think we thought, I know I thought, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would bring an end to that terror, and would bring hope for the first time in a generation to Iraqis. I think those of us who felt that should have studied harder, and tried to acquaint ourselves more with the history of this country, and realized that beneath the carapace of terror laid a deeply fractured, deeply dysfunctional society in which Sunni, Shiia and Kurds have been locked together, and held in some relative stability only by at the point of a gun. Had we known all that, had we fully weighed all of that, I think that we might have reckoned then that ghastly as the terror of Saddam Hussein was, there was something even more ghastly that could ensure. I personally am too close to this now to be able to make any kind of judgment about that, and I think the judgment will depend on events yet to unfold. But I think that journalists, we who file mostly for 24 hour deadlines, need to learn a lesson, and I’m talking about myself, as much as anybody else here, and that we need to think very carefully when we’re cast into situations like this, and we become the messengers, if you will, the tribunes of the Western world, to write more about those sorts of things, the fractured society that lay beneath that carapace of terror, than just the terror itself.
HH: Was there any way, is it possible, do you think on that reflection, that however hard the last four years have been, was there any other way to get past Saddam? Or was it, and is there a possibility in your mind that it will all be worth it in the end?
JB: I guess the judgment on that will probably be something like 20-25 years out from now.
HH: Yeah.
JB: …the judgment that the Iraqi people will have to make. Right now, the remarkable thing is not that so many Iraqis look back on Saddam’s time with a sense of yearning, but that so many other Iraqis, namely Shiite Iraqis and Kurdish Iraqis, who were his principal victims, continue to believe that his overthrow was for the best. What history’s judgment about this will be extremely difficult to tell. But one thing we can be sure of is that it will have cost enormous numbers of lives, and it makes you wonder, looking back to the period of 2003 and before…
(Call dropped – End of Part 2)
JB: John Burns…
HH: Mr. Burns, I’m just calling back, it’s Hugh Hewitt, to say thank you for the hour. It’s been fascinating, we’ll play it in its entirety on Monday, and I hope in a few more months, we can get you back to do it again. It’s riveting radio.
JB: Well, thank you very much, and I enjoyed the chat.
HH: Thank you, John Burns.
JB: Bye bye.
HH: Bye bye.
End of interview.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Victor Davis Hanson
New York Times Surrenders A monument to defeatism on the editorial page12 July 2007
On July 8, the New York Times ran an historic editorial entitled “The Road Home,” demanding an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq. It is rare that an editorial gets almost everything wrong, but “The Road Home” pulls it off. Consider, point by point, its confused—and immoral—defeatism.
1. “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”
Rarely in military history has an “orderly” withdrawal followed a theater-sized defeat and the flight of several divisions. Abruptly leaving Iraq would be a logistical and humanitarian catastrophe. And when scenes of carnage begin appearing on TV screens here about latte time, will the Times then call for “humanitarian” action?
2. “Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.”
We’ll get to the war’s “sufficient cause,” but first let’s address the other two charges that the Times levels here against President Bush. Both houses of Congress voted for 23 writs authorizing the war with Iraq—a post-9/11 confirmation of the official policy of regime change in Iraq that President Clinton originated. Supporters of the war included 70 percent of the American public in April 2003; the majority of NATO members; a coalition with more participants than the United Nations alliance had in the Korean War; and a host of politicians and pundits as diverse as Joe Biden, William F. Buckley, Wesley Clark, Hillary Clinton, Francis Fukuyama, Kenneth Pollack, Harry Reid, Andrew Sullivan, Thomas Friedman, and George Will.
And there was a Pentagon postwar plan to stabilize the country, but it assumed a decisive defeat and elimination of enemy forces, not a three-week war in which the majority of Baathists and their terrorist allies fled into the shadows to await a more opportune time to reemerge, under quite different rules of engagement.
3. “While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs—after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.”
Of course there were breakthroughs: most notably, millions of Iraqis’ risking their lives to vote. An elected government remains in power, under a constitution far more liberal than any other in the Arab Middle East. In the region at large, Libya, following the war, gave up its advanced arsenal of weapons of mass destruction; Syria fled Lebanon; A.Q. Khan’s nuclear ring was shut down. And despite the efforts of Iran, Syria, and Sunni extremists in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, a plurality of Iraqis still prefer the chaotic and dangerous present to the sure methodical slaughter of their recent Saddamite past.
The Times wonders what Bush’s cause was. Easy to explain, if not easy to achieve: to help foster a constitutional government in the place of a genocidal regime that had engaged in a de facto war with the United States since 1991, and harbored or subsidized terrorists like Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, at least one plotter of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida affiliates in Kurdistan, and suicide bombers in Gaza and the West Bank. It was a bold attempt to break with the West’s previous practices, both liberal (appeasement of terrorists) and conservative (doing business with Saddam, selling arms to Iran, and overlooking the House of Saud’s funding of terrorists).
Is that cause in fact “lost”? The vast majority of 160,000 troops in harm’s way don’t think so—despite a home front where U.S. senators have publicly compared them with Nazis, Stalinists, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, and Saddam Hussein’s jailers, and where the media’s Iraqi narrative has focused obsessively on Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and serial leaks of classified information, with little interest in the horrific nature of the Islamists in Iraq or the courageous efforts of many Iraqis to stop them.
4. “Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.”
The military is stretched, but hardly broken, despite having tens of thousands of troops stationed in Japan, Korea, the Balkans, Germany, and Italy, years—and decades—after we removed dictatorships by force and began efforts to establish democracies in those once-frightening places. As for whether Iraq is a diversion from the war on terror: al-Qaida bigwig Ayman al-Zawahiri, like George W. Bush, has said that Iraq is the primary front in his efforts to attack the United States and its interests—and he often despairs about the progress of jihad there. Our enemies, like al-Qaida, Iran, and Syria, as well as opportunistic neutrals like China and Russia, are watching closely to see whether America will betray its principles in Iraq.
5. “Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs.”
The Times should abandon the subjunctive mood. The catastrophes that it matter-of-factly suggests have ample precedents in Vietnam. Apparently, we should abandon millions of Iraqis to the jihadists (whether Wahhabis or Khomeinites), expect mass murders in the wake of our flight—“even genocide”—and then chalk up the slaughter to Bush’s folly. And if that seems crazy, consider what follows, an Orwellian account of the mechanics of our flight:
6. “The main road south to Kuwait is notoriously vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Soldiers, weapons and vehicles will need to be deployed to secure bases while airlift and sealift operations are organized. Withdrawal routes will have to be guarded. The exit must be everything the invasion was not: based on reality and backed by adequate resources.
“The United States should explore using Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq as a secure staging area. Being able to use bases and ports in Turkey would also make withdrawal faster and safer. Turkey has been an inconsistent ally in this war, but like other nations, it should realize that shouldering part of the burden of the aftermath is in its own interest.”
This insistence on planned defeat, following incessant criticism of potential victory, is lunatic. The Times’s frustration with Turkey and other “inconsistent” allies won’t end with our withdrawal and defeat. Like everyone in the region, the Turks want to ally with winners and distance themselves from losers—and care little about sermons from the likes of the Times editors. The ideas about Kurdish territory and Turkey are simply cover for the likely consequences of defeat: once we are gone and a federated Iraq is finished, Kurdistan’s democratic success is fair game for Turkey, which—with the assent of opportunistic allies—will move to end it by crushing our Kurdish friends.
7. “Despite President Bush’s repeated claims, Al Qaeda had no significant foothold in Iraq before the invasion, which gave it new base camps, new recruits and new prestige.
“This war diverted Pentagon resources from Afghanistan, where the military had a real chance to hunt down Al Qaeda’s leaders. It alienated essential allies in the war against terrorism. It drained the strength and readiness of American troops.”
The Times raises the old charge that if we weren’t in Iraq, neither would be al-Qaida—more of whose members we have killed in Iraq than anywhere else. In 1944, Japan had relatively few soldiers in Okinawa; when the Japanese learned that we planned to invade in 1945, they increased their forces there. Did the subsequent carnage—four times the number of U.S. dead as in Iraq, by the way, in one-sixteenth the time—prove our actions ill considered? Likewise, no Soviets were in Eastern Europe until we moved to attack and destroy Hitler, who had kept communists out. Did the resulting Iron Curtain mean that it was a mistake to deter German aggression?
And if the Times sees the war in Afghanistan as so important, why didn’t it support an all-out war against the Taliban and al-Qaida, as it apparently does now, when we were solely in Afghanistan?
8. “Iraq may fragment into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics, and American troops are not going to stop that from happening. . . . To start, Washington must turn to the United Nations, which Mr. Bush spurned and ridiculed as a preface to war.”
But Bush did go to the United Nations, which, had it enforced its own resolutions, might have prevented the war. In fact, the Bush administration’s engagement with the UN contrasts sharply with President Clinton’s snub of that organization during the U.S.-led bombing of the Balkans—unleashed, unlike Iraq, without Congressional approval. The Times also neglects to mention that the UN was knee-deep in the mess of its cash cow Iraq, from its appeasement of the genocidal Hussein regime to its graft-ridden, $50 billion oil-for-food scandal, reaching the highest echelons of Kofi Annan’s UN administration.
9. “Washington also has to mend fences with allies. There are new governments in Britain, France and Germany that did not participate in the fight over starting this war and are eager to get beyond it. But that will still require a measure of humility and a commitment to multilateral action that this administration has never shown. And, however angry they were with President Bush for creating this mess, those nations should see that they cannot walk away from the consequences.”
New governments in France and Germany are more pro-American than those of the past that tried to thwart us in Iraq. The Times surely knows of the Chirac administration’s lucrative relationships with Saddam Hussein, and of the German contracts to supply sophisticated tools and expertise that enabled the Baathist nightmare. Tony Blair will enjoy a far more principled and reputable retirement than will Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder, who did their best to destroy the Atlantic Alliance for cheap partisan advantage at home and global benefit abroad.
Nations like France and Germany won’t “walk away” from Iraq, since they were never there in the first place. They never involve themselves in such dangerous situations—just look at the rules of engagement of French and German troops in Afghanistan. Their foreign policy centers instead on commerce, suitably dressed up with fashionable elite outrage against the United States.
10. “For this effort to have any remote chance, Mr. Bush must drop his resistance to talking with both Iran and Syria. Britain, France, Russia, China and other nations with influence have a responsibility to help. Civil war in Iraq is a threat to everyone, especially if it spills across Iraq’s borders.”
China and Russia, seeing only oil and petrodollars, will take no responsibility to help. Both will welcome a U.S. retreat. Yes, “civil war” will spill over the borders, but not until the U.S. precipitously withdraws. Iran and Syria—serial assassins of democrats from Lebanon to Iraq—are hoping for realization of the Times’s scenario, and would be willing to talk with us only to facilitate our flight, with the expectation that Iraq would become wide open for their ambitions. In their view, a U.S. that fails in Iraq surely cannot thwart an Iranian bomb, the Syrian reabsorption of Lebanese democracy, attacks on Israel, or increased funding and sanctuary for global terrorism.
11. “President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened—the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.”
But as the Times itself acknowledges, what has happened in the past only previews what is in store if we precipitously withdraw. And this will prove the case not only in Iraq, but elsewhere in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, Taiwan, and Korea. Once the U.S. demonstrates that it cannot honor its commitments, those dependent upon it must make the necessary adjustments. Ironically, while the Times urges acceptance of defeat, Sunni tribesmen at last are coming forward to fight terrorists, and regional neighbors are gradually accepting the truth that their opportunistic assistance to jihadists is only threatening their own regimes.
We promised General Petraeus a hearing in September; it would be the height of folly to preempt that agreement by giving in to our summer of panic and despair. Critics called for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a change in command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops. But now that we have a new secretary, a new command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops, suddenly we have a renewed demand for withdrawal before the agreed-upon September accounting—suggesting that the only constant in such harping was the assumption that Iraq was either hopeless or not worth the effort.
The truth is that Iraq has upped the ante in the war against terrorists. Our enemies’ worst nightmare is a constitutional government in the heart of the ancient caliphate, surrounded by consensual rule in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Turkey; ours is a new terror heaven, but with oil, a strategic location, and the zeal born of a humiliating defeat of the United States on a theater scale. The Islamists believe we can’t win; so does the New York Times. But it falls to the American people to decide the issue.
New York Times Surrenders A monument to defeatism on the editorial page12 July 2007
On July 8, the New York Times ran an historic editorial entitled “The Road Home,” demanding an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq. It is rare that an editorial gets almost everything wrong, but “The Road Home” pulls it off. Consider, point by point, its confused—and immoral—defeatism.
1. “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”
Rarely in military history has an “orderly” withdrawal followed a theater-sized defeat and the flight of several divisions. Abruptly leaving Iraq would be a logistical and humanitarian catastrophe. And when scenes of carnage begin appearing on TV screens here about latte time, will the Times then call for “humanitarian” action?
2. “Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.”
We’ll get to the war’s “sufficient cause,” but first let’s address the other two charges that the Times levels here against President Bush. Both houses of Congress voted for 23 writs authorizing the war with Iraq—a post-9/11 confirmation of the official policy of regime change in Iraq that President Clinton originated. Supporters of the war included 70 percent of the American public in April 2003; the majority of NATO members; a coalition with more participants than the United Nations alliance had in the Korean War; and a host of politicians and pundits as diverse as Joe Biden, William F. Buckley, Wesley Clark, Hillary Clinton, Francis Fukuyama, Kenneth Pollack, Harry Reid, Andrew Sullivan, Thomas Friedman, and George Will.
And there was a Pentagon postwar plan to stabilize the country, but it assumed a decisive defeat and elimination of enemy forces, not a three-week war in which the majority of Baathists and their terrorist allies fled into the shadows to await a more opportune time to reemerge, under quite different rules of engagement.
3. “While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs—after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.”
Of course there were breakthroughs: most notably, millions of Iraqis’ risking their lives to vote. An elected government remains in power, under a constitution far more liberal than any other in the Arab Middle East. In the region at large, Libya, following the war, gave up its advanced arsenal of weapons of mass destruction; Syria fled Lebanon; A.Q. Khan’s nuclear ring was shut down. And despite the efforts of Iran, Syria, and Sunni extremists in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, a plurality of Iraqis still prefer the chaotic and dangerous present to the sure methodical slaughter of their recent Saddamite past.
The Times wonders what Bush’s cause was. Easy to explain, if not easy to achieve: to help foster a constitutional government in the place of a genocidal regime that had engaged in a de facto war with the United States since 1991, and harbored or subsidized terrorists like Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, at least one plotter of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida affiliates in Kurdistan, and suicide bombers in Gaza and the West Bank. It was a bold attempt to break with the West’s previous practices, both liberal (appeasement of terrorists) and conservative (doing business with Saddam, selling arms to Iran, and overlooking the House of Saud’s funding of terrorists).
Is that cause in fact “lost”? The vast majority of 160,000 troops in harm’s way don’t think so—despite a home front where U.S. senators have publicly compared them with Nazis, Stalinists, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, and Saddam Hussein’s jailers, and where the media’s Iraqi narrative has focused obsessively on Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and serial leaks of classified information, with little interest in the horrific nature of the Islamists in Iraq or the courageous efforts of many Iraqis to stop them.
4. “Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.”
The military is stretched, but hardly broken, despite having tens of thousands of troops stationed in Japan, Korea, the Balkans, Germany, and Italy, years—and decades—after we removed dictatorships by force and began efforts to establish democracies in those once-frightening places. As for whether Iraq is a diversion from the war on terror: al-Qaida bigwig Ayman al-Zawahiri, like George W. Bush, has said that Iraq is the primary front in his efforts to attack the United States and its interests—and he often despairs about the progress of jihad there. Our enemies, like al-Qaida, Iran, and Syria, as well as opportunistic neutrals like China and Russia, are watching closely to see whether America will betray its principles in Iraq.
5. “Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs.”
The Times should abandon the subjunctive mood. The catastrophes that it matter-of-factly suggests have ample precedents in Vietnam. Apparently, we should abandon millions of Iraqis to the jihadists (whether Wahhabis or Khomeinites), expect mass murders in the wake of our flight—“even genocide”—and then chalk up the slaughter to Bush’s folly. And if that seems crazy, consider what follows, an Orwellian account of the mechanics of our flight:
6. “The main road south to Kuwait is notoriously vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Soldiers, weapons and vehicles will need to be deployed to secure bases while airlift and sealift operations are organized. Withdrawal routes will have to be guarded. The exit must be everything the invasion was not: based on reality and backed by adequate resources.
“The United States should explore using Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq as a secure staging area. Being able to use bases and ports in Turkey would also make withdrawal faster and safer. Turkey has been an inconsistent ally in this war, but like other nations, it should realize that shouldering part of the burden of the aftermath is in its own interest.”
This insistence on planned defeat, following incessant criticism of potential victory, is lunatic. The Times’s frustration with Turkey and other “inconsistent” allies won’t end with our withdrawal and defeat. Like everyone in the region, the Turks want to ally with winners and distance themselves from losers—and care little about sermons from the likes of the Times editors. The ideas about Kurdish territory and Turkey are simply cover for the likely consequences of defeat: once we are gone and a federated Iraq is finished, Kurdistan’s democratic success is fair game for Turkey, which—with the assent of opportunistic allies—will move to end it by crushing our Kurdish friends.
7. “Despite President Bush’s repeated claims, Al Qaeda had no significant foothold in Iraq before the invasion, which gave it new base camps, new recruits and new prestige.
“This war diverted Pentagon resources from Afghanistan, where the military had a real chance to hunt down Al Qaeda’s leaders. It alienated essential allies in the war against terrorism. It drained the strength and readiness of American troops.”
The Times raises the old charge that if we weren’t in Iraq, neither would be al-Qaida—more of whose members we have killed in Iraq than anywhere else. In 1944, Japan had relatively few soldiers in Okinawa; when the Japanese learned that we planned to invade in 1945, they increased their forces there. Did the subsequent carnage—four times the number of U.S. dead as in Iraq, by the way, in one-sixteenth the time—prove our actions ill considered? Likewise, no Soviets were in Eastern Europe until we moved to attack and destroy Hitler, who had kept communists out. Did the resulting Iron Curtain mean that it was a mistake to deter German aggression?
And if the Times sees the war in Afghanistan as so important, why didn’t it support an all-out war against the Taliban and al-Qaida, as it apparently does now, when we were solely in Afghanistan?
8. “Iraq may fragment into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics, and American troops are not going to stop that from happening. . . . To start, Washington must turn to the United Nations, which Mr. Bush spurned and ridiculed as a preface to war.”
But Bush did go to the United Nations, which, had it enforced its own resolutions, might have prevented the war. In fact, the Bush administration’s engagement with the UN contrasts sharply with President Clinton’s snub of that organization during the U.S.-led bombing of the Balkans—unleashed, unlike Iraq, without Congressional approval. The Times also neglects to mention that the UN was knee-deep in the mess of its cash cow Iraq, from its appeasement of the genocidal Hussein regime to its graft-ridden, $50 billion oil-for-food scandal, reaching the highest echelons of Kofi Annan’s UN administration.
9. “Washington also has to mend fences with allies. There are new governments in Britain, France and Germany that did not participate in the fight over starting this war and are eager to get beyond it. But that will still require a measure of humility and a commitment to multilateral action that this administration has never shown. And, however angry they were with President Bush for creating this mess, those nations should see that they cannot walk away from the consequences.”
New governments in France and Germany are more pro-American than those of the past that tried to thwart us in Iraq. The Times surely knows of the Chirac administration’s lucrative relationships with Saddam Hussein, and of the German contracts to supply sophisticated tools and expertise that enabled the Baathist nightmare. Tony Blair will enjoy a far more principled and reputable retirement than will Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder, who did their best to destroy the Atlantic Alliance for cheap partisan advantage at home and global benefit abroad.
Nations like France and Germany won’t “walk away” from Iraq, since they were never there in the first place. They never involve themselves in such dangerous situations—just look at the rules of engagement of French and German troops in Afghanistan. Their foreign policy centers instead on commerce, suitably dressed up with fashionable elite outrage against the United States.
10. “For this effort to have any remote chance, Mr. Bush must drop his resistance to talking with both Iran and Syria. Britain, France, Russia, China and other nations with influence have a responsibility to help. Civil war in Iraq is a threat to everyone, especially if it spills across Iraq’s borders.”
China and Russia, seeing only oil and petrodollars, will take no responsibility to help. Both will welcome a U.S. retreat. Yes, “civil war” will spill over the borders, but not until the U.S. precipitously withdraws. Iran and Syria—serial assassins of democrats from Lebanon to Iraq—are hoping for realization of the Times’s scenario, and would be willing to talk with us only to facilitate our flight, with the expectation that Iraq would become wide open for their ambitions. In their view, a U.S. that fails in Iraq surely cannot thwart an Iranian bomb, the Syrian reabsorption of Lebanese democracy, attacks on Israel, or increased funding and sanctuary for global terrorism.
11. “President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened—the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.”
But as the Times itself acknowledges, what has happened in the past only previews what is in store if we precipitously withdraw. And this will prove the case not only in Iraq, but elsewhere in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, Taiwan, and Korea. Once the U.S. demonstrates that it cannot honor its commitments, those dependent upon it must make the necessary adjustments. Ironically, while the Times urges acceptance of defeat, Sunni tribesmen at last are coming forward to fight terrorists, and regional neighbors are gradually accepting the truth that their opportunistic assistance to jihadists is only threatening their own regimes.
We promised General Petraeus a hearing in September; it would be the height of folly to preempt that agreement by giving in to our summer of panic and despair. Critics called for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a change in command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops. But now that we have a new secretary, a new command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops, suddenly we have a renewed demand for withdrawal before the agreed-upon September accounting—suggesting that the only constant in such harping was the assumption that Iraq was either hopeless or not worth the effort.
The truth is that Iraq has upped the ante in the war against terrorists. Our enemies’ worst nightmare is a constitutional government in the heart of the ancient caliphate, surrounded by consensual rule in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Turkey; ours is a new terror heaven, but with oil, a strategic location, and the zeal born of a humiliating defeat of the United States on a theater scale. The Islamists believe we can’t win; so does the New York Times. But it falls to the American people to decide the issue.
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