Archiv der Kategorie: Iraq

compulsory reading, Iraq

More Reality Construction

Sorry I did not post that much interesting stuff this week. But, luckily, I have readers who do.

Sebastian Holsclaw commented on my analysis of Steven denBeste’s theory and points out that it only makes sense as long as one assumes that Germany and France never actually believed they could keep the US from pursuing a violent regime change in Iraq. He writes –

If they believed that Bush could be talked out of it, they could attempt to hide their theoretical arms dealings by making sure that the US did not go into Iraq. This interpretation gains credence because the French could have avoided the damage which has been done to the UN if they had known that the US was going forward against Iraq….

I don’t think preempting a US preemption would have really saved the UN’s authority. But that’s not the problem at hand, of course.

I agree that France and Germany might have believed that there was a possibility to solve the conflict peacefully, let’s say until the end of last year. But I argue they arranged themselves with the seeming inevitability early in 2003, predominantly for populist causes and in total disregard of the Steven denBeste argument.

I have argued before that I believe France and Germany could have stopped the imminent war within the last twenty-four hours of diplomacy in March by signing the British bullet point list, agreeing on a date with Blix, El Baraidei and Blair, and offering serious military and political support in case of a negative Blix-report in, say, July. It would have been very difficult – not to say impossible – to poltically justify the imminent war in light of such a proposition of international support. In case of a negative Blix report in July, the Iraqi weather might not have been ideal for war, especially given that most people believed the resistance would be stronger than it turned out to be. In autumn, it would probably have been too late for a US president who wants to be reelected, plus the problem of fighting during Ramadan. So, from this perspective, France and Germany might have actually have stopped the war by pledging military support, which would have also solved the Steven denBeste problem in my interpretation.

So why didn’t they do it? Some people I told this said they will not have thought about it. That is clearly a possibility, albeit one I tend not to believe, given that there are a lot of professional diplomats working for the Auswaertiges Amt as well as for the Quai d’Orsay.

The explanation I favour is political – all relevant players had invested too much personal political capital in the respective positions to switch in the last minute. Yet another explanation is – they could have cornered Bush in the last hours but decided against it because actually smugly demonstrating how the American eagle could be tied would have proven more complicated for the transatlantic relationship than quietly arguing “we could have”, so do what you think you have to do – and if it goes well, we’re in for a free ride.

See, lots of stuff for future phd candidates to write about ;-). For the rest of us, the comment Mitch left is probably the most appropriate way to think about it –

The whole WMD argument for going into Iraq has become irrelevent at this point. The American public has a very short attention span and will have forgotten all about what the reasons were by the end of the month, perhaps sooner. And they couldn’t care less about what the rest of the world thinks.

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compulsory reading, German Politics, Iraq, oddly enough, US Politics

Reality Construction.

One of the currently more popular theories of US-war-blogosphere regarding the German and French government’s opposition to the war is that they opposed it in order to conceal the extent to which they were involved in the built-up of Iraq’s pool of WMD. This theory has been prominently publicized by Steven DenBeste.

For all those who hold the opinion that no thinking human being could oppose the war for non-selfish reasons, DenBeste’s theory seemed to be a logic explanation of reality. But it has serious flaws. It is certainly not flawed to say that there is a certain possibility that a number of German and French companies (as well as companies from other nations…) sold suspicious stuff to Saddam’s regime pre-, but especially post 1991 in breach of UN sanctions. It is, however, flawed to argue that the French and German government’s opposition to the war must have been informed by this, including the possibility that the governments actually found out about such a breach by companies legally residing in the respective country. In fact, such a conclusion is actually illogical – although chances are, we will never find out, because whatever is or is not reported to be found in Iraq is entirely within the discretion of those in control of the area.

Thus, depending on the US’ government’s intentions of how to involve Europe in the reconstruction of Iraq (that’s what denBeste calls the ‘blackmailing strategy’), the theory could well be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Eamonn Fitzgerald today points to an article in the New York Times that illustrates this rather well – now that the US and the UK are actually in charge of Iraq and will soon be in control of whatever remains of the previous administration, they are unlikely to reveal information that would put blame on themselves for whatever remains of WMDs they may find down there. And I suppose they will find something eventually – they simply have to, after using the Iraqi WMD-threat as a pro-war-discourse element for so long. So it is very likely that the stuff they will acknowledge to have found will be of Old European production – French, I suppose – and, again, the amount of stuff revealed will probably depend on the development of the transatlantic relationship in the coming weeks and months.

Looking at the problem from this perspective, the DenBeste theory does not make much sense. Had Germany’s and France’s governments been involved in the military build-up of Iraq in a way they would have deemed necessary to conceal, the logical policy would have been to be as involved in the invasion as possible in order to retain as much control over what will be found and what will be published now. Being as closely allied to the US as possible is certainly a better way to achieve that than publicly angering the Pentagon’s PR people, don’t you think?

But even though the theory may be wrong, the result may eventually be close to what Steven DenBeste predicted. Some reality will be constructed, even though, in the end, no one will actually know what has been going on.

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almost a diary, Germany, Iraq, oddly enough

To Guard The American Poo

Ok, I know this place is getting progressively mono thematic. And I know there is a lot of note/newsworthy stuff going on that too many people, including myself, are forgetting about because the war in Iraq is requiring too much of our sensory bandwidth. But there’s hope: yesterday morning, for the first time in weeks, if not months, something not Iraq related – a bank-robbery-and-bus-hijacking in Berlin – was the number one news item in German media. But as no one died in Berlin today, Baghdad was back on top by 4pm. Isn’t that sending a message to all hijackers – “listen, perpetrators, the attention threshold has risen significantly. If you still want your fifteen minutes, try at least to hurt someone badly.”

Anyway. I just wanted to show you a funny good-night picture I found on www.totalobscurity.com where I was sent by Lillimarleen. I know what you think: Photoshop. I did too, but totalobscurity.com claims it is a real product…

To Guard The American Poo

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compulsory reading, Iraq, oddly enough, Political Theory, US Politics

A Tale of Perle and Pirls

So Baghdad sort of fell today. The Iraqi regime seems to have disappeared overnight. This is clearly a very good thing. I still believe that this war was unnecessary as well as unwise and I still believe that it is going to be far more costly – monetarily as well as in lives and in terms of international security – than the US administration seems to have reckoned in their calculations. And it is not over yet.

But I am ready to admit that I was moved by the Iraqi people welcoming the US troops – and I felt reminded of the tales my parents told me about US soldiers handing out chocolate to starving German toddlers after WW2. Whatever the regime that will follow on the US military government will be like, whether authoritarian, in order to handle the ethnic clashes and distributive conflicts that will in all likelihood arise now, or possibly truly democratic – as Paul Wolfowitz said today, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, a government of the Iraqi people, by the Iraqi people, for the Iraqi people – life in Iraq will in all likelihood be better in the future than it was in the past. And not just because of the “tax refunds” some Iraqis claimed today in the form of previously administration-owned furniture.

However, for the time being, I still do not share the US neoconservatives’ assessment that the American Prometheus can indeed bring good governance and enlightenment to the middle east. Certainly not within a few years. And that’s a huge part of the problem. The Saudis welcomed the US in 1990. Four years later, they were already regarded as semi-occupiers of Islamic holy land. Candy for kids is not going to modernize the region by itself. Just as Brad DeLong notes today –

… we could still turn operational victory into strategic defeat, and harm the national security of the United States. The story the world needs to tell itself is that the United States overthrew a cruel dictator and gave Iraqis a much better life, not the out-of-control United States bombed and invaded a small country because President Bush wanted to get his hands on its oil.

I suppose, there is indeed a tiny, tiny chance that social modernisation by tank could work. And it remains tiny, even though the professionalism of the allied troops that made this war a short campaign without too many civilian victims has clearly increased it significantly. But however minuscule it is, the US has – against the will of many – committed itself and the rest of “the west” to embark on this adventure.

I contend I do not believe it will work. But this is a problem where I would love to be proven wrong in the end. If all goes well, I am hereby inviting Richard Perle to publicly lecture me in, say, 15 years about the right attitude in international relations with the following fable. It was, interestingly enough, part of the recently published “The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study” (PIRLS) which assessed a range of reading comprehension strategies of ten year olds in 35 countries. I thought about adapting it to “Weasel heralds the War!” but then decided against it – after all, it is a fable that is very likely to remain just that.

Hare Heralds the Earthquake
by Rosalind Kerven

There was once a hare who was always worrying. “Oh dear,” he muttered all day long, “oh deary, deary me.” His greatest worry was that there might be an earthquake. “For if there was,” he said to himself, “whatever would become of me?”

He was feeling particularly anxious about this one morning, when suddenly an enormous fruit fell down from a nearby tree – CRASH! – making the whole earth shake. The hare leaped up. “Earthquake!” he cried. And with that he raced across the fields to warn his cousins.

“Earthquake! Run for your lives!” All the hares left the fields and madly followed him. They raced across the plains, through forests and rivers and into the hills warning more cousins as they went. “Earthquake! Run for your lives!” All the hares left the rivers and plains, the hills and forests and madly followed. By the time they reached the mountains, ten thousand hares pounded like thunder up the slopes. Soon they reached the highest peak. The first hare gazed back to see if the earthquake was coming any closer, but all he could see was a great swarm of speeding hares. Then he looked in front but all he could see was more mountains and valleys and, far in the distance, the shining blue sea.

As he stood there panting, a lion appeared. “What’s happening?” he asked. “Earthquake, earthquake!” babbled all the hares. “An earthquake?” asked the lion. “Who has seen it? Who has heard it?” “Ask him, ask him!” cried all the hares, pointing to the first one. The lion turned to the hare.

“Please Sir,” said the hare shyly, “I was sitting quietly at home when there was a terrible crash and the ground shook and I knew it must be a quake, Sir, so I ran as fast as I could to warn all the others to save their lives.” The lion looked at the hare from his deep, wise eyes.

“My brother, would you be brave enough to show me where this dreadful disaster happened?”

The hare didn’t really feel brave enough at all, but he felt he could trust the lion. So, rather timidly, he led the lion back down the mountains and the hills, across the rivers, plains, forests and fields, until at last they were back at his home.

“This is where I heard it, Sir.” The lion gazed around – and very soon he spotted the enormous fruit which had fallen so noisily from its tree. He picked it up in his mouth, climbed onto a rock and dropped it back to the ground. CRASH! The hare jumped. “Earthquake! Quickly – run away – it’s just happened again!”

But suddenly he realized that the lion was laughing. And then he saw the fruit rocking gently by his feet. “Oh,” he whispered, “it wasn’t really an earthquake after all, was it?” “No,” said the lion, “it was not and you had no need to be afraid.” “What a silly hare I’ve been!”

The lion smiled kindly. “Never mind, little brother. All of us – even I – sometimes fear things we cannot understand.” And with that he padded back to the ten thousand hares that were still waiting on top of the mountain, to tell them that it was now quite safe to go home.

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Iraq, US Politics

Hoping For The Best. But Expecting The Worst.

Anthony Zinni, President Bush’s former Middle East peace envoy said that he resigned from this posiition a month ago in part because he mentally weaseled out of the party line by believing that

“[t]his is in fact the wrong war at the wrong time.”

His assessment is shared by – if I am counting correctly – most people with expert knowledge of the region. But in the end, no one knows what the consequences of this war will be in the long, medium, and even in the short run. No one even knows what is *really* going on right now down there [except those with a spy-satellite of their own…] Both sides are trying to instrumentalise the media machine for their respective propaganda (did you notice how the Iraqi on screen design changed from white sheets and a flag to a nice blue global map after the US centcom presented its Star-Wars-bridge-like briefing room?) – they report, and we decide which side is to believe less for the moment.

But quite indenpently of the question whether the battle for Bagdad will be as swift as all recent conquests of Paris (thank God for German general Choltitz, who did not carry out Hitler’s order to burn down the city in back in August 1944) or whether coalition forces will be dragged into a bloody street fight like in Berlin or Mogadishu, I think Zinni is right to assume that things could have been a lot worse if it weren’t for the professionalism of the leading coalition forces.

However, I wonder if they will be able to uphold the rather positive record when it comes to institution building and/or simply running Iraq. I am afraid even the most skilled military conquerors are still going to fail to win a lasting peace. I am afraid that their core competence is not public administration. And most of all I am afraid that there is a lot of potential to politically screw it all.

As always, I’m hoping for the best. But I am expecting the worst.

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Iraq, US Politics

Rubber Bands vs. Cannons

Earlier tonight, RTL television broadcast an in-depth 25 minutes interview with Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Pentagon’s defense policy board who stepped down at the end of last week due to alligations of possible conflicts of interest between public and private consulting engagements (see earlier post). I tuned in too late so I don’t know when this interview was taped – but judging from his attitude and words I assume it was not during the last few days.

Asked how he would describe the military disparity between the US and other NATO forces, he said something along the line of –

“…it’s like one shooting with Rubber Bands and the other one with Cannons.”

Now most people know that ‘low tech’ will beat ‘high tech’ whenever the latter’s vulnerable spot is known. I read somewhere that Iraqi soldiers have onw found out that the main US battle tank (Abrams M1A1/M1A2) does seem to have a soft spot – and so they developed a way to exploit it with their anachronistic 1970s Soviet anti-tank weapons. Not that I fear this indicates that the US could actually be forced to pull back – *that* would be a scenario I believe not even the staunchest opponents of this war would hope for once they think about the ramifications for a nanosecond – but it shows that disrespect for the rubber band equipped enemy is never a healthy strategy.

Yet it is precisely this kind of arrogance that is displayed by the Perles of this world [I read Michael Lind’s “Made In Texas” on my way back from Paris and I can’t say the book has increased my sympathy for the neo-conservatives’ worldview…]. It is the “Daddy knows best” – attitude of these apparently overeducated men that gives otherwise simplistic books like Michael Moore’s bestseller “Stupid White Men” the grain of truth needed to be sold.

In the interview mentioned above Perle explained why he believes that force (he did not say ‘war’, probably because of the nasty associations) should not be just a “means of last resort” for a given international problem – because it often seems to be more difficult to solve it by force later on. This is captivating logic – if one is in possession of complete information about the future.

As for arrogance, here’s another example, this time from Paul Wolfowitz, US Deputy Secretary Of Defense. In a recent interview with Newsweek magazine he was (also) asked what he made of the intense opposition to war from the streets all over the world –

Newsweek: But in all these countries it’s a really strong domestic tide.
DepSecDef Wolfowitz: But it’s fed by leadership. Leadership matters. American opinion is different because our leadership is talking about it differently.

Why, exactly, is it, that I fear a lot of those wargamers did watch the war-room sequence in “Patriot Games” a bit too often.

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Iraq, oddly enough

Ministry Of Silly Talks

And now for something completely different: Geoff Hoon, the British Defense minister seems to have single-handedly redefined the meaning of British Humour. He’s clearly missed a career in Monty Python’s Flying Circus… Electrolite heard the following on Sky News tv:

“Umm Qasr is a town similar to Southampton,”

UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons yesterday.

“He’s either never been to Southampton, or he’s never been to Umm Qasr,” said one British soldier, informed of this while on patrol in Umm Qasr. Another added: “There’s no beer, no prostitutes, and people are shooting at us. It’s more like Portsmouth.”

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Iraq, US Politics

The Small Print

When I first heard that Richard Perle were to step down as chairman of the Pentagon’s defence policy board I wondered whether it is an indication that the ongoing war – including reports about understaffed and underequipped US forces – had given the military in the Pentagon enough clout to force Perle, one of the neoconservative civilian bullies, out after it was reported that he was not only advising the Pentagon (for free) but also a bankrupt U.S. telecommunications company, Global Crossings (for a lot of money).

According to the NYTimes, 600,000 US Dollars of Perle’s overall 725,000 Dollar consulting contract depended on the Pentagon’s agreement to the sale of 61,5% of Global Crossing to a joint venture formed by Hutchison Whampoa, controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Kashing, and Singapore Technologies Telemedia, a phone company controlled by the government of Singapore. Clearly, the NYTimes was rather modest to ask Perle to

“… choose between the gain and the office…” –

However, let’s not forget that, until now, the Richard Perles of this world did not care too much about possible shifts in public opinion following reports about apparent conflicts of interests – just look at my post from last Friday, written just before the Perle story broke.

So whatever the inside story of Perle’s resignation is – according to Spiegel Online [link in German] Perle himself claims to be a victim of a media campaign – it does indicate that “the boys” weren’t willing to publicly back him up given the current “Oh-My-God-These-Iraqis-Actually-Do-Have-
Some-Guns-Left” public opinion .

But however important this this may seem on the surface, the small print indiactes something else. Perle is not actually giving back his security pass to the Pentagon, according to the NYTimes –

“Rumsfeld accepted the resignation and said Perle would remain a member of the Defense Policy Board, a bipartisan group that advises him on a wide variety of policy issues. Its 30 members are largely former government officials, retired military officers and former members of Congress.”

So the only differences to last week will very likely be a U.S. public reassured that U.S. media does still at least somewhat control the executive, and that Perle will keep a lower public profile than in recent months. But then again, getting out of the limelight might very well be to “The Prince of Darkness’s” liking.

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Iraq, oddly enough, US Politics

Against the rules…

I’m out of town, so I’ll be brief tonight. Via “warblogging.com“, I found this “Corpwatch.com” document regarding a serious involvement in US military activities of a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil construction company previously managed by current US Vice President Dick Cheney.

Most of the article is concerned with some sort of public-privqte-partnership in the running of certain logistic activities.

In December 2001, Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, secured a 10-year deal known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), from the Pentagon. The contract is a “cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service” which basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send Brown and Root anywhere in the world to run military operations for a profit. … Army officials working with Brown and Root says the collaboration is helping cut costs by hiring local labor at a fraction of regular Army salaries. “We can quickly purchase building materials and hire third-country nationals to perform the work. This means a small number of combat-service-support soldiers are needed to support this logistic aspect of building up an area,” says Lt. Col. Rod Cutright, the senior LOGCAP planner for all of Southwest Asia.”

On an theoretical level, I find this most interesting, as I would have predicted that the nature of transactions conducted by the military on a mission in a crisis area would make it difficult to rely on contractors – even longterm ones – and thus imply the internalisation and hierarchical coordination of all factors necessary. But apparently, a longterm contract seems to be able to handle the organisational problems at hand. Interesting.

On a political level, I am concerned about the impression these contracts will leave, regardless of the fact that

[Dick Cheney’s] spokesperson denies that the White House helped the company win the contract.”

Of course, there are perfectly reasonable explanations for such contracts – maybe Halliburton provided the best offer for a long planned service, maybe other companies are in the same business, in a comparable way, maybe, maybe, maybe – but whatever may or may not be justified in the decision to award them such a contract, the suspicion that the Bush administration does have a private agenda that is at least partly different from its public rethoric is certainly not being refuted by such stories, as the article indicates.

“Critics say that the apparent conflict of interest is deplorable. ‘The Bush-Cheney team have turned the United States into a family business,’ says Harvey Wasserman, author of The Last Energy War (Seven Stories Press, 2000).”

While this is certainly a fringe opinion, I can’t help but wonder why someone like Dick Cheney would not try to avoid stories like by not giving contracts to previous employers at all costs. Including alligations of discrimination against his former employer.

I just don’t get it.

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Iraq, US Politics

Back To Iraq. Some now, Some later.

It’s war –

“[t]he opening stages of the disarmament of the iraqi regime have begun…”

according to Ari Fleischer and as reported by Christopher Allbritton, a former AP and New York Daily News reporter, who is trying to blog-raise enough money to go to Nothern Iraq in three weeks or so and be a truly independent war-blogger. I only recently discovered his blog back-to-Iraq, but I think I like it a lot.

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