DoD suits scrabbling yet again to find a workable plan

Steven Weisman writes in today's NYT that un-named "administration officials" say the Bush administration now plans to revise the plan for a handover to self-rule in Iraq that was agreed on just last November 15. The revision is reportedly aimed at "responding to" the firm insistence that Ayatollah Sistani announced Sunday that any Iraqi self-rule government be the result of--wait for this shocking revelation!-- a fully democratic process. So does this mean that Baghdad fashion maven Jerry Bremer and his Washington handlers are now prepared to move away from "the Rube Goldberg process"-- the incredibly unwieldy and undemocratic mechanism agreed back in November whereby undemocratic "caucuses" and other such gatherings would generate a new Iraqi leadership? No, it does not. As Weisman reports it: The new hope in Washington, the officials said, was in effect to make the caucus system look more democratic without changing it in a fundamental way. So I guess we could call the proposed new system "Rube Goldberg, II". That will make it at least the fourth* of the "strategic" plans the administration has adopted for the handover since the US forces took Baghdad last April. (And the pace at which the administration is falling back from one plan to the next seems to be speeding up.) And I have a sneaking suspicion that Sistani, who doesn't seem to be anyone's fool, is not necessarily going to have the wool pulled over his eyes on this one? Weisman also reports another aspect of Sistani's Sunday declaration that I had not seen reported elsewhere, and that likewise came as a big shock to Bremer and his backers: Administration officials also expressed concern about a separate part of Ayatollah Sistani's statement on Sunday that demanded that any agreement for American-led forces to remain in Iraq be approved by directly elected representatives.

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Open Door Policy
A strange thing happened on the way to the war.

My personal experience leaning precariously toward the neoconservative maw showed me that their philosophy remains remarkably untouched by respect for real liberty, justice, and American values. My years of military service taught me that values and ideas matter, but these most important aspects of our great nation cannot be defended adequately by those in uniform. This time, salvaging our honor will require a conscious, thoughtful, and stubborn commitment from each and every one of us, and though I no longer wear the uniform, I have not given up the fight.

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  thanks to Information Clearing House

Army War College report critical of Bush foreign policy
Author calls war on terrorism 'unrealistic'

A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing an "unrealistic" quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat. The report, by visiting U.S. Professor Jeffrey Record, who is on the faculty of the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is "near the breaking point." It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war on terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorist network. "(T)he global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly ... its parameters should be readjusted," Record writes. The anti-terrorism campaign "is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security," he said.

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Bounding the Global War on Terrorism
Dr. Jeffrey Record

How NOT to win in Iraq

We can assume the translator is still there a few feet away, quietly 'saying his prayers' and listening as Major Nagl refers to his countrymen dismissively as "clowns" who don't read maps... [Or let's say, to be generous, that maybe the translator in question is an Arabic-speaking US soldier... Still, it's quite the wrong thing for him to hear Major Nagl referring to Iraqi citizens as "clowns".] Plus, Major Nagl should surely know if he spent even half as much time around Oxford University as I did, that questions of epistemology are always crucial. ("How do we know what we think we know?" Those kinds of questions... Questions that compare different ways of "knowing" something.) So here's this putative Iraqi person who maybe has good, solid intel. Or maybe not. Maybe giving the 'tip-off' to the Americans is just a grudge-match against a neighbor.... How would Major Nagl know the difference?? But assuming there is some intel out there, and that Nagl needs at the very least to check it out... Whose form of knowledge is more useful for the task? Nagl's form, including the ability to read maps and satellite images from a distance-- or the putative Iraqi's form of knowledge, which is based on such things as knowing how to tell the local houses apart from each other; or who lives inside which house; or how those many individuals are related to each other or to others through family or other ties? So who is the knowledge-deprived "clown" in this whole interaction? Who is it who needs to learn a bit of real humility and start figuring out that maybe he needs to learn a lot more about a completely different form of knowledge? Who is it whose totally appalling lack of people-skills-- referring dismissively to Iraqis as "clowns" in front of (possibly Iraqi) third parties, or indeed, at all-- means he seems ill positioned to win any competition for "hearts and minds"? Hint: it ain't the Iraqi.

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Professor Nagl's War

Shadowboxing: For the Iraqi Dead

When the Word Trade Center went down, The New York Times generously and appropriately honored every body with a brief character profile composed with considerable artistry—a monument in miniature to the over two thousand gone. More than a gesture, the much-lauded feature underscored how much we value our fellow citizens—our neighbors, for Christ’s sake. Each of the dead was more than a face—each had a family and friends and interests opening into a web of ties that rippled throughout our society. Each man’s death diminishes me, wrote John Donne. And he was right. Note that Donne didn’t qualify his statement by specifying that it was an Englishman’s death alone that reduced him. You may be sure he would have, had that been what he meant. He had a way with words. While it may sound like the start of a very bad joke, one of the key questions we in the United States need to ask ourselves is: how is a dead Iraqi civilian different from a dead American (of any sort)? Certainly most of the dead began with two ears, two eyes, two arms, two legs. One heart. And we may assume all corpses carry the same passport. Yet I suspect there must be some difference between them, between “their” dead and “ours”—otherwise, how could we justify paying so little attention to the Iraqi non-combatants we’ve killed? While there’ve been over two hundred “American” humans killed (every one of them unnecessarily, many by friendly fire), some 11,000 Iraqi civilians have died. They have died, we must acknowledge, for us. These are the people we decided wanted liberation. It was our call, and it was in response to our wound. In short, it was our cause. Their country—but never mind. Their lives, too. Oh well.

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  thanks to wood s lot