This conservative caucus never liked the neocon argument for removing Saddam. They didn't like nation building and didn't believe the Iraqis were capable of democracy. They wanted to remove a perceived WMD threat, but most of all, they wanted to strike terror into the heart of their enemies by showing what US military might could do.

Depose Saddam, remove the weapons, install a client dictator and leave as much rubble behind as possible: that was the game plan. This would deter the Iranians and leave a light military footprint. The plan had Donald Rumsfeld written all over it, and it helps explain a lot about the Bush administration's dogged refusal to add more troops in the first few months after the invasion.

Rumsfeld and Cheney may well be the key proponents of this argument. It is, of course, stupid. When you are dealing with a generational struggle to defang Islamist extremism, your central weapon is winning over the moderate Muslims and Arabs. You do the reverse by bombing a country into chaos and then leaving

Q That's quite all right. Mr. President, I'd like to go back to Iraq. You've continually cited the elections, the new government, its progress in Iraq, and yet the violence has gotten worse in certain areas. You've had to go to Baghdad again. Is it not time for a new strategy? And if not, why not?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, Martha, you've covered the Pentagon, you know that the Pentagon is constantly adjusting tactics because they have the flexibility from the White House to do so.

Q I'm talking about strategy --

THE PRESIDENT: The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve their objectives and their dreams, which is a democratic society. That's the strategy. The tactics -- now, either you say, yes, its important we stay there and get it done, or we leave. We're not leaving, so long as I'm the President. That would be a huge mistake. It would send an unbelievably terrible signal to reformers across the region. It would say we've abandoned our desire to change the conditions that create terror. It would give the terrorists a safe haven from which to launch attacks. It would embolden Iran. It would embolden extremists.

No, we're not leaving. The strategic objective is to help this government succeed. That's the strategic -- and not only to help the government -- the reformers in Iraq succeed, but to help the reformers across the region succeed to fight off the elements of extremism. The tactics are which change. Now, if you say, are you going to change your strategic objective, it means you're leaving before the mission is complete. And we're not going to leave before the mission is complete. I agree with General Abizaid: We leave before the mission is done, the terrorists will follow us here.

And so we have changed tactics. Our commanders have got the flexibility necessary to change tactics on the ground, starting with Plan Baghdad. And that's when we moved troops from Mosul into Baghdad and replaced them with the Stryker Brigade, so we increased troops during this time of instability.

اعتبروا أن ذلك أفضل لبلادهم

ولأميركا
جنرالات وباحثون إسرائيليون يدعون إلى تقسيم العراق

Are neo-cons history?
By Jacob Weisberg

Published: March 14 2007 19:17 | Last updated: March 14 2007 19:17

The term “neo-conservative” has many usages, including “former liberal” and “Jewish conservative”. In recent years, however, it has taken on clearer definition as a philosophy of aggressive unilateralism and the attempt to impose democratic ideas on the Arab world. The neo-conservatives also constitute a distinct group around George W. Bush, the US president. They pushed for the invasion of Iraq and remain identified with hardline positions on Iran, Syria and North Korea.

Outside the administration, the chief fulcrum of neo-conservatism is the American Enterprise Institute. The day after vice-president Dick Cheney’s former aide Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury, AEI held its annual black-tie gala. I did not go expecting contrition, but under the circumstances it seemed possible that self-examination might feature on the menu. Once a lazy pasture for moderate Republicans hurtled into the private sector by Gerald Ford’s 1976 defeat, AEI has turned in recent years into a kind of Cheney family think-tank. It had not been a good week, year, or second term for any of these people and I thought a few cocktails might cause them to consider their predicament.

This was fantasy on my part. From the stage, one took no hint that matters were not working out as anticipated. All rose to salute the arrival of Mr and Mrs Cheney, herself a longtime fellow at the institute. The vice-president looked on from the head table as his friend, Bernard Lewis, perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq, came up to accept an award.

In his address, the 90-year-old Mr Lewis did not revisit his argument that regime change in Iraq could provide the jolt needed to modernise the Middle East. Instead, he spoke about the millennial struggle between Christianity and Islam. Mr Lewis argues that Muslims have adopted migration, along with terror, as the latest strategy in their “cosmic struggle for world domination”. This is a familiar framework from the original author of the phrase “the clash of civilisations”. What did surprise me was Mr Lewis’s denunciation of Pope John Paul II’s 2000 apology for the crusades as political correctness run amok, which drew clapping. Mr Lewis’s view is that the Muslims started the trouble by invading Europe in the eighth century; the crusades were merely a failed imitation of Muslim jihad in an endless see-saw of conquest and reconquest.

Were one to start counting ironies here, where would one stop? Here was a Jewish scholar criticising the Pope for apologising to Muslims for a holy war against Muslims, which was also a massacre of the Jews. Here were the theorists of the invasion of Iraq, many of them also Jewish, applauding the notion that the crusades were not so terrible and embracing a time horizon that makes it impossible to judge their war an error. And here was the clubhouse of the neo-conservatives, throwing itself a lavish party when the biggest question in American politics is how to escape the hole they have dug.

But whether or not the neo-cons are prepared to face it, there are increasing signs that their moment is finally over. At the Defence department, Donald Rumsfeld has been replaced by Robert Gates, a member of the Iraq Study Group and an affiliate of the realist school associated with the previous President Bush. Paul Wolfowitz, the architect who wanted to build a new Middle East on Saddam’s rubble, has been moved to the World Bank, where he observes a Robert McNamara-like silence on the failure of his war. Another former Pentagon official, Douglas Feith, is under investigation for misrepresenting intelligence data to make the case for the invasion.

At the State department, Condoleezza Rice is returning to her realist roots and now actually seems to direct policy. She has embraced shuttle diplomacy in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, is considering conversation with Syria and Iran and even made a nuclear deal with North Korea. These steps signify a broader shift away from what the neo-con defector Francis Fukuyama calls “hard Wilsonian” ideas and back towards the less principled, more effective pragmatism of Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser, and James Baker, former secretary of state.

The most important sign of all is the fading influence of Mr Cheney, who for six years dominated foreign policy in a way no previous vice-president ever has. Mr Cheney is discredited, unwell and facing various congressional investigations. He was badly damaged by the Libby trial, which exposed his ruthless mania to justify a war gone wrong.

But the larger factor in Mr Cheney’s demise is that his neo-conservative hypotheses have been falsified by events. Invading Iraq did not catalyse a new Middle East; isolating North Korea advanced its nuclear programme; high-handed unilateralism has reduced American power. At the outset of his presidency, Mr Bush thought himself lucky to have a number two who did not aspire to his job. He may now grasp the hazard of lending so much power to someone with no incentive to test his views in the political marketplace.

As disciples of Bernard Lewis, it is unlikely Mr Cheney and the neo-con crusaders will apologise for what they have wrought. Like Mr Bush, they look to the long span of history for vindication. It will indeed be eons before anyone trusts them again.


The writer is editor of Slate.com

Ali Allawi: The Invasion
We won the war, but lost the peace. In this exclusive extract from his definitive history of the conf lict in Iraq, Ali Allawi explains how the conquering armies allowed victory to give way to anarchy
Monday, March 05, 2007

Ali Allawi

أنحى الرئيس العراقي جلال الطالباني خلال الكلمة التي ألقاها أمام القمة العربية في الرياض اليوم الخميس باللائمة على السياسات التي اتخذتها الإدارة المدنية الأميركية في العراق عقب سقوط نظام صدام حسين

ليكتشف بعض منهم ولو متأخرا و أخيرا : بأنه حقا أن هناك ثمة شيئا ما ليس على ما يرام في سياسة الاحتلال الأمريكية الجارية بخطوات متعثرة بل و كسيحة في العراق ، وأن الغاية من هذا الاحتلال هو دمار العراق ! ..
أما لماذا ؟؟! ..
فأنهم الآن يحكون ما خلف أذانهم و جبينهم ليقولوا متلعثمين :
ــ و الله لا نفهم لماذا يتصرف الأمريكيون هكذا في العراق ؟؟! .. و لماذا يتعاملون مع الإرهابيين و أزلام النظام السابق المجرمين بكل هذا التعاطف و بيد مبطنة بالقفزات الحريرية ؟؟! .. و لماذا لم يقضوا على المليشيات المسلحة وهي ما زالت طرية و هشة في مهدها ؟؟! ..
لقد قلنا لهم مرارا :
ــ حسنا ! .. أن إدارة بوش قد أسقطت النظام السابق ، و لقد فرحنا لذلك ! ، غير أنها تعاملت مع العراق فيما بعد ، كمن ينقذ غريقا من اللجة المضطربة لمدة قصيرة ، و من ثم ليرميه مجددا في عمق اللجة ليغرق نهائيا و إلى الأبد !! ..
بالطبع أن هناك بعضا ممَن ما زال غافيا على الوسادة الوردية الأمريكية ــ التي هي وسادة من قش خشن في حقيقة الأمر ـــ وهو يحاول أن يبرر بأن الأمريكيين قد ارتكبوا بعض أخطاء في العراق ، و أن الأمور حتما ستجري على ما يرام في يوم من الأيام ؟!! ..
بينما نحن في المقابل ذلك ، بتنا نعتقد بأنه طالما أن الأمريكيين باقيين في العراق ، فأن العراق سوف لن يكون على ما يرام في يوم من الأيام ، لأنهم ليسوا جديين لكي يكون العراق و شعبه على ما يرام !..
هذه الحقيقة المرة ، أخذ يدركها غالبية العراقيين أن لم يكن كلهم ، و من هنايأتي مصدر يأسهم الأكبر !.

Iraq’s Year of Living Dangerously

Kurdish difficulties do not revolve around suicide bombers, visions of seventh-century caliphates, disdain for the United States or pure sectarian hatred as in the Sunni-Shiite civil war. They concern the cold, hard issues of land and oil and cash, as well as the distribution of power between Iraq’s center and its regions and provinces.
In addition to the three provinces that are run by the Kurdish regional government, the Kurds claim lands in three other Iraqi provinces, including the emotionally charged and oil-rich region of Kirkuk. To back up these claims, and because the Iraqi government previously had been unable to secure much of northern Iraq, the Kurds deployed their pesh merga fighters in these disputed places — often originally at Baghdad’s request. They have also used their considerable political powers in much of the area to undo the effects of Saddam Hussein’s brutal policy of Arabization of Kurdish lands. Meanwhile, they have exploited ambiguities in the Constitution to strike deals with foreign firms for oil wells within their three provinces, much to the displeasure of Baghdad.
These tensions nearly led to violence last summer in the ethnically mixed city of Khanaqin, which lies outside the current boundaries of Kurdistan, in Diyala Province, but was under the control of the pesh merga. Prime Minister Maliki, emboldened by recent battlefield successes of Iraq’s Army and police against Shiite militias in Basra and elsewhere, apparently decided to put the Kurds in their place as well.

Mr. Maliki deployed army forces to Khanaqin, only to have them run right into a standoff with the pesh merga troops. Ultimately, cooler heads prevailed, but it should be noted that many of those cooler heads were American — the United States troops who were partnered with the Iraqi Army formations ran interference between the Iraqi Army units and the Kurdish soldiers and brokered a peaceful resolution.

Today other crises loom. An oil field in Kurdistan developed by a Norwegian company is poised to begin production in March. It is not clear whether the Kurds will contribute the revenue from the field to the common Iraqi oil pot, as the central government demands, or will claim the proceeds entirely for themselves. Not only does Mr. Maliki view any Kurdish effort to go it alone on oil as unacceptable, he may also sense that inflating it as a campaign issue could help him and his Dawa Party in parliamentary voting this year.

And while key leaders from Mr. Maliki’s government, various parliamentary opposition parties, and the Kurds all insist that they plan to resolve their differences peacefully, several members of the American military command for Northern Iraq warned us during conversations in Iraq last week that the officers of the newly forming Iraqi 12th Infantry Division have repeatedly stated that once their unit is ready, they plan to occupy their entire area of operations — which includes Kirkuk. The pesh merga fighters, of course, are just as adamant that this would be unacceptable.

While the United Nations has been putting together a grand plan for resolving the Kurdish issues, it cannot impose a solution — and under the terms of the new security agreement, neither can the United States. But just because Washington no longer holds viceregal authority does not mean it is powerless. America’s military forces, which increasingly serve as peacekeepers, and its commitment of nation-building tools (including provincial reconstruction teams and technical advisers in the Iraqi government) still give American officials tremendous influence. Washington must employ this leverage deftly to help Iraqi Arabs and Kurds (and Turkmens and others) overcome their differences.

The Obama administration has been handling the Iraq war pragmatically so far. And while announcing a timetable poses a serious risk, the details of Mr. Obama’s plan leaked to the press this week are promising, especially leaving behind a large residual force including trainers and quick-reacting “maneuver units” and slowing the drawdown by three months relative to what he had promised on the campaign trail. Those few months are vital, as they should give the Iraqis adequate time to form their new government before the American troop levels are vastly diminished. Ideally, whatever he announces now, Mr. Obama will remain flexible, and slow the pace next year if necessary.

GIVEN Iraq’s strategic significance, the mission ceased to be a “war of choice” the moment American forces crossed the border in March 2003. Now we have no choice but to see Iraq through to stability.

It is worth remembering that our current economic disaster started with a great rise of oil prices from 2004 to 2007, which then helped set off the mortgage and credit meltdowns. Although the increase in oil prices had more to do with inadequate refining capacity and increased demand from China and India than with instability of the Middle East, previous recessions have resulted from the area’s political calamities; it is easy to imagine others in the future.






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THE Iraq war isn’t over. And while President Obama’s apparent decision to withdraw the bulk of American troops by August 2010 is not necessarily a mistake, it cannot be carried out rigidly. If all continues to go well, it should be eminently feasible; if not,the administration will have to show the strategic wisdom to slow down as needed to deal with problems.

Having just returned from a trip to the country arranged by the top American commander there, Gen. Ray Odierno, we agree that Iraq continues to make tremendous strides, thanks to American assistance and, increasingly, the efforts of Iraqi politicians and security forces. But both those ready to dust off the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner and declare victory and those who continue to see Iraq as an inherent disaster that must simply be abandoned have to realize that continued American involvement will be crucial for several more years.

Young democracies are fragile entities. Political scientists generally agree that achieving a peaceful and credible second round of elections is critical in putting a new democracy on a path toward stability, because such elections test whether the country can accomplish a nonviolent transfer of power.

Iraq is holding its second round of real elections this year. It just concluded extremely successful provincial votes, and national parliamentary elections are to follow. Iraq’s calendar this year is also jam-packed with other important political events. If the United States can help the Iraqis secure even modestly positive outcomes for these events, we will have gone a long way toward realizing our goals of sustainable stability in Iraq and bringing most of our troops home next year.

Iraq is no longer convulsed by the chaos, sectarianism and terrorism that were driving it into all-out civil war in 2006. To be sure, friction remains, most notably in the ethnically diverse city of Mosul in the north, where coalition forces have only recently been reinforced to the point where they can conduct the kind of counterinsurgency campaign that secured the rest of the country. Unfortunately, they are racing against the clock to do so, since the recently signed security agreement between Baghdad and Washington requires American combat forces to leave Iraq’s cities by June 30.

But the main challenge now is that some key political players, strengthened by Iraq’s enormous recent progress, are less interested in moving their country forward than in using every tool at their disposal to put themselves in advantageous positions after the American withdrawal. Worse still, some — perhaps many — are doing so by exploiting the immaturity of the political process and the ambiguities in Iraq’s constitution.

Iraq has several important challenges that could strain its political system over the next year. They include the return of up to four million displaced people to their homes; the release of thousands of people detained by coalition forces, some of them surely dangerous; the continued search for permanent jobs for the largely Sunni Sons of Iraq, whose actions against the insurgents in Anbar Province were a key to the success of the “surge”; falling oil prices that will hamper the government’s ability to pay its workers; and the more general tasks of increasing oil exports, employment and the quality of life for Iraqis.

Perhaps the most vivid demonstration of the problems Iraq faces is the enormous tension brewing between the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, led by Massoud Barzani, and the central government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. During the years of warfare between Sunni and Shiite Arabs, the Kurdish issue lay dormant. But now it has roared back to the forefront. Nearly everyone we spoke with in the area this month — Kurds, Arabs, Americans and others — described the situation as explosive and the enmity between Mr. Barzani and Prime Minister Maliki as ferocious.


In addition, we cannot overlook Iraq’s enormous regional significance. President Obama has rightly insisted that the Bush administration committed cardinal sins by failing to engage Syria and Iran in its regional strategy and by remaining aloof from the Israeli-Palestinian and Lebanese conflicts for too long. But any broader Middle Eastern agenda is hostage to the situation in Mesopotamia. If Iraq slips back into chaos, President Obama is going to find little desire among Jordanians, Saudis, Syrians and Turks for taking the hard steps to forge a durable peace with Israel — or among Iranians to reach a rapprochement. In the end, it is up to the Iraqis to make their nation peaceful and productive — we should not baby-sit Iraq through all of its problems as a young democracy. But it faces one last crucially tense period in the coming 12 to 18 months. American interests argue strongly for using all the leverage we have gained among Iraqis during six years of intense partnership to help Iraq through its “year of transitions” — then we can bring our troops home quickly, but responsibly.