Thursday, 27 March 2003

The Curious Incident. It's been over a week since the start of the war. Coalition forces are within sight of Baghdad. The Iraqi army has been less a factor than the Iraqi weather. Saddam is missing. The world is watching. There has never been a better time to step out of the shadows and strike at the soft underbelly of Western civilization.

So why is Al Qaeda missing in action?

The obvious explanation is the gung-ho optimistic one: Our counter-terrorist activities have reduced their ability to mount attacks. They're on the run, and it's all they can do to stay hidden; even something as simple and direct as a truck bomb is now beyond their capabilities.

I don't think that's the case, though. An attack on the level of Kenya or Bali doesn't take a lot of resources; that's why they call it "asymmetrical." I can believe that targets like American embassies and warships were made much harder to hit after 9/11, and then secured even further as the Iraq war began—but every nightclub and hotel in Western civilization? Every bridge, power plant, water supply, and landmark on three continents? Unlikely.

I think the more likely explanation is that Al Qaeda is both less and more capable than we generally recognize. Al Qaeda lacks depth: They don't have a pool of operatives and bombs at the ready, standing by to strike on Osama's command; they've never had any capacity to mount timely terrorist attacks, not even to follow up the World Trade Center's destruction. If Al Qaeda had the resources to put a truck bomb on the Brooklyn Bridge anytime on or after 11 September 2001, then their failure to do so was, and is, inexplicable. (Of course, Al Qaeda's failure to follow through is partly explained by the fact that they're fanatical religious nutjobs: When the final step in your plan is "and then Allah smites the unbelievers and our brothers in the Middle East rise up in glorious jihad!", your backup plans may suffer.)

Where Al Qaeda has shown its capability, and why they're a serious threat, is that they can patiently nurture a plan that requires years to develop and implement. The 9/11 attacks were the product of a sustained effort, and somewhere in the world another Al Qaeda cell may be quietly working on a dirty bomb, or nerve gas, or some other asymmetric horror. If so, they likely won't have anything ready as specific retaliation for America's Iraq invasion—but they'll keep working, and their attack will come on some random day that happens to fit their plans.

I frankly expected there would be a rash of suicide bombings to mark the start of the war in Iraq, or at least one significant terrorist attack of some kind: America's embassy in Paris has been a rumored Al Qaeda target for some time, and a bombing there would be especially damaging now in light of the political situation. If there isn't a major attack in the next few weeks, we can assume that Al Qaeda's capabilities have been crippled to the point where they can't mount one—or that Al Qaeda, and other like-minded terrorist groups, will remain in the shadows until a time of their choosing.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 5:29 am. comments.

Wednesday, 26 March 2003

Information overload. As I mentioned earlier, I'm on sabbatical this month—Australian labor law thoughtfully mandates a month's paid leave for every five years with a company, and I transferred in with twelve years under my belt, so I've given myself a nice long six-week holiday. As it happened, my vacation began the day Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq, so I've been able to give the war my complete and undivided attention: For seven straight days now, I have read the entire Internet. I have absorbed every piece of information that has been blogged about the war, watched every news channel in existence, and this has been my entire exposure to the war (well, except for the protest march in downtown Sydney that made me late for dinner with my parents).

On that basis, I feel uniquely qualified to talk about warblogging, information overload, and the perception of war vs. the reality. Here's what I've observed so far:

• American military vehicles have a two-speed throttle. They are either "racing toward Baghdad" (moving) or "bogged down" (not moving); they have no other settings. "Bogged down" is a military term that includes stopping to fire, stopping for the night, stopping for inclement weather, stopping to secure a bridge, or anything else short of charging into a minefield at flank speed.
• Coalition forces endanger the lives of innocent civilians. By contrast, Iraqi troops do not endanger civilians by: Dressing as civilians, using civilians as human shields, operating out of civilian hospitals, putting artillery in civilian areas, or firing mortars at civilians. Nope. No endangering of civilians here. Move along. Hey, the Americans dropped a bomb on a bridge, er, I mean, on a bus filled with innocent doe-eyed school children and bunny rabbits! What barbarians.
• We should only fight on odd-numbered days. According to television reports, the war was going extremely well on Wednesday, Friday, Sunday and Tuesday, and was becoming a quagmire on Thursday, Saturday, Monday and today. We should adjust our strategy and fight on the good days.
• The Iraqi government can avoid violating the Geneva Convention simply by announcing they aren't violating it. Execution-style slaying of captured POWs is acceptable, as long as you publicly declare afterwards that you're treating (surviving?) prisoners according to the terms of the Geneva Convention. This is apparently the same logic that led people to believe that Saddam had disarmed in response to Resolution 1441—because, hey, he announced he had disarmed.
• The Iraqis have downed 74 Apache helicopters, the Americans have found 37 chemical weapons factories, and the British have encircled Basra 37 times. I've learned this by reading each warblog and news report separately, which gives me a clearer overall perspective. I'm not completely sure, but I may be reading about the same event more than once.
• Television analysts are much better at war planning than those idiots at the Pentagon. Having recklessly raced almost all the way to Baghdad in less than a week, American supply lines are way too long at this stage; the troops should have stopped at the halfway mark and, I dunno, planted beans or something, so they'd have more supplies for later.
• Turkey is on our side. No, wait, they're not. They're putting troops into Iraq. No, wait, they already had troops in Iraq, and they're just reinforcing them. No, wait, they're not moving any troops at all. No, wait, they're seizing Iraqi oilfields. No, wait, they're clashing with the Kurds. No, wait... darn it, could someone please embed a reporter on the Iraq side of the Iraq-Turkey border? I'm getting a headache here.
• The war is taking longer than expected. The television journalists had all expected to see American armor in Baghdad suburbs by the end of day five, and were heartily disappointed at Tommy Franks's lack of progress. (How this fits with the critique of overextended supply lines, I don't know yet; I'm sure there must be a logical explanation, though.)
• France has its own doctrine of pre-emption. They're pre-vetoing American U.N. resolutions on the administration of post-war Iraq, unless they involve bringing back Saddam and giving him one more last chance. Normally I'd write a French joke in this space, but I don't want to compete with Chirac.

More seriously, relying on weblogs for war news is like watching Rashomon over and over. No, it's like watching five different remakes of Rashomon, all looping simultaneously at slightly different film speeds. Getting your news this way is simultaneously better and worse than relying on one or two old-media sources: Better because it's easier to detect and correct bias, but worse because it takes so much more effort—and there's always that sweet, siren temptation to shut off your brain and cherry-pick the sources that reinforce your own biases. Blogs, and the "new media" in general, enrich the national conversation and threaten to splinter it into factions; it's a double-edged sword for the well-informed citizen.

Nonetheless, once you filter out all the biases, the military war is going about as well as could be expected (at least, for the coalition): Saddam's strategy appears to have been to create humanitarian disasters and blame them on the coalition, throwing as many civilians in harm's way as possible in the hopes of eroding popular support for the war—but the allied forces haven't taken the bait, the "embedded" reporters are generally making it clear who's responsible for what, and the people of America, Britain and Australia are, according to the opinion polls, closing ranks in support of the war. It's not over yet, and at some point Saddam may abandon this strategy and start lobbing nerve gas at the incoming troops, but in the end this won't save him.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 7:30 am. comments.

Thursday, 20 March 2003

The USS Donald Cook was one of the ships launching Tomahawk cruise missiles early this morning in an effort to kill Saddam Hussein and end the war before it even begins. For those wondering who Donald Cook is, and why the U.S. named a ship after him, scroll to the bottom of this page.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 6:54 am. comments.

Thursday, 20 March 2003

Australia's three major television networks are now showing satellite feeds directly from NBC, CBS, and CNN; Dan Rather looks a lot older than he did when I saw him last. The Australian networks will occasionally break in with reports from their own correspondents, and they've put their own "crawling text" at the bottom of the screen (below the American ones), but otherwise we're getting American news. A fourth channel, the one that usually shows foreign-language movies all day, is running the BBC satellite feed.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 4:07 am. comments.

Wednesday, 19 March 2003

Sabbatical. Australian labor law has this wonderful, wonderful provision called "Long Service Leave," which says that if you work for a company for ten years, you get two calendar months of paid vacation, with an additional month off every five years thereafter.

I've only been in Australia for three years, and as an American expat on temporary assignment I wasn't eligible for this benefit anyway. (On the other hand, the company was covering my housing costs, foreign taxes, car expenses, and paying me in nice solid American currency while the Aussie dollar swooned to about US$0.50... so I'm not complaining.) But, last year I stopped being an expat on temporary assignment, and became a regular employee of our Australian subsidiary... and transferred in with twelve years of experience.

So I'll be taking the rest of March and April off. My parents are flying out for a week or two (they've never been to Australia before), and my lady-love and I will join them on a trip to Alice Springs, home of the great big rock in the middle of nowhere (known as either "Ayers Rock" or "Uluru;" it's one of those "Denali" vs. "Mount McKinley" things). But mostly I'm taking six weeks off to just recharge my batteries and relax for a while. I've got a great big stack of books to read—I'm one of those people who can't walk out of a bookstore without half a dozen books in hand, and lately my reading habits have fallen behind my buying habits—and a few odd projects to tackle, but beyond that I'm planning to enjoy my longest stretch of free time since, oh, somewhere in college I guess.

I'll still be blogging, but it'll be more travelogue than warblog for a while, which is probably just as well. I'm one of those people the pundits call a "liberal hawk," which means I believe we have a moral obligation to remove Saddam Hussein from power, that force is the only means by which this goal can be achieved—and that I'm holding my nose while Team Dubya takes makes a dog's breakfast of that compelling moral argument and shreds our international credibility. The raw-throated war chant "if we can't make them love us, we must make them fear us!" is good policy for Al Qaeda, but Dubya is applying it to Mexico, Chile, France, Germany, Russia, China, Turkey, Canada, Cameroon, South Korea and, well, everyone else—and it's not working. We're trashing our own reputation. The fire-eaters are counting on a swift victory in Iraq to rehabilitate America's image abroad, but I'm living abroad, and I can already tell you: It won't.

I think John Scalzi nailed it yesterday when he observed that America has, until now, successfully kept other nations from banding together against us, by honoring the polite fiction that we actually cared what other countries thought: We dutifully consulted the Frances and Britains and South Koreas of the world, politely asked their opinions, and at least gave the illusion that we were respectfully considering their views before we went off and did what we wanted regardless. Now the illusion is wearing thin, and as a result we're losing allies we should have persuaded. We're making it difficult and unpopular to back America, even in nations like Britain and Australia, whose mutual interests with America are so obvious and compelling that it should be a snap decision.

In any case, the bombs will start falling in less than 48 hours, Saddam will finally be removed from power, and then perhaps we talking heads can turn our attention to more urgent problems. (Sam Nunn is the American Cassandra.) I think everyone will be relieved when it's over; in spite all the rhetoric about "rushing to war," we've been on the road to Baghdad (and talking about little else) for months, if not years. To the troops I give my prayers and support: No matter how much I doubt Bush's diplomacy, I have nothing but confidence in America's armed forces—and nothing but admiration for the men and women who risk their lives for our country. Good luck and godspeed.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 5:20 am. comments.

Saturday, 15 March 2003

Coercive acts. Steven Den Beste repeats his call that America should retaliate against the French for their pro-Iraq, anti-America stance in the United Nations. After listing several options for punishing France, Steven declares:

Some will claim that all of this is motivated by spite. It is not. It is, rather, motivated by the fact that if we do not retaliate against the French after their recent performance, other nations will be encouraged to act in the same way towards us. It is clear to the world that American friendship is valuable; it must be equally clear that American enmity is expensive. That way we encourage other nations to cooperate with us.

The reader who prompted Steven's article also asked the interesting question, "How far should the punishment go and what risk of scoring own-goals in the process?" The question is revealing, in part, because of Steven's answer to it: He gives none. He analyzes the merits of different punishment sticks for twenty paragraphs or so, without even considering the question of whether punishing France could backfire upon America and harm our interests abroad.

Steven prides himself on his analytical mind, and frequently cites examples from his engineering background to boost his arguments. But how effective is an engineer who disregards laws of nature? Steven's analyses fall short of the mark, due to blind spots that he himself proudly declares: He is a Jacksonian, and puts little faith in the tools of diplomacy (that is, anything more subtle than the "carrot and stick" approach), and he is willfully ignorant of foreign opinion—he "doesn't care why they hate us," where "they" means not only Al Qaeda but pretty much anyone not in the Jacksonian definition of "us."

As a fellow engineer, I'll challenge Steve to incorporate new information into his theories. Steven cites Yugoslavia as an example where "punishment" was effective and "diplomacy" was not: By punishing the Serbs, we were able to enforce our will upon them and make it "more expensive" for them to ignore us. (I'd say this example is better suited to explain why inspections only work when there's a 250,000-man army standing by on the Iraqi border, but we'll set that aside for now.) Is this the only data that history provides regarding the effectiveness of "punishment" as a diplomatic tool? Is it the most relevant example? Let's look at another.

In 1770, Britain was the most powerful nation on earth, and the American Colonies slept under a blanket of security provided by British soldiers. Less than twenty years before British redcoats had bailed out the Colonists during the French and Indian War, and the cost of maintaining that defense had been a continuing drain on British coffers. The average Brit thought the Colonials had been getting a free ride from the mother country, and believed the British Parliament should recover Colonial defense costs by imposing taxes on the Colonies. The Colonists resented taxation because they had no say in how it was imposed, and believed the British Parliament was trying to dominate their affairs—but, up to this point, they had largely limited their objections to peaceful protests and boycotts. There was a vocal and growing minority calling for rebellion, but the majority of Colonists were, and wanted to remain, loyal and friendly to Britain.

In 1773, after years of protests that fell on deaf ears, a group of colonists staged an act of civil disobedience called the Boston Tea Party. (Just to set the record straight before we go any further: I am most emphatically not drawing any parallels between the American Revolution and Al Qaeda. Any such analogies are repulsive, and anyone who makes them is stupid. This is a comparison of 1774 Britain to 2003 America, and no other metaphors are expressed or implied. Thank you.) The British judged that if they let such brazen defiance go unanswered, the Colonists would never cease to defy Parliament's will—and so they enacted legislation to punish the colony of Massachusetts. These laws, collectively called the "Coercive Acts" or "Intolerable Acts" by the Colonists, closed the port of Boston and all but revoked the Massachusetts Colony's charter; they also gave British soldiers the right to be tried in Britain for any crimes committed in the colonies, to ensure a fair trial for the soldiers. (Wonder what the 1774 British would have thought of the International Criminal Court.)

The British expected the other twelve Colonies to see what was happening to Massachusetts, and be deterred from any further acts of rebellion. The Parliament believed quite sincerely that their punishments would be effective: They wouldn't be loved by the Colonists, but they would be respected or feared. The Colonials were weak, ungrateful, insolent, and they deserved to be spanked—and the British frankly didn't care what the Americans thought, or about their reasons for defiance in the first place.

The results, suffice to say, were not a glorious outcome for Britain. The American reaction to Massachusetts's "punishment" was not to abandon defiance, but to band together in support of Massachusetts and present a united front to the British—and, less than two years later, escalate their defiance to open military rebellion. They even turned to Britain's old enemy, France, for support and aid. Britain, still the world's most powerful country, faced the impossible task of bringing America to heel by force... and ultimately had no choice but to retreat in disgrace and acknowledge American independence.

Now, which of these historical situations is a better predictor for what will happen if America "punishes" France in 2003: NATO vs. Serbia in 1999, or Britain vs. Massachusetts in 1775? Which are the French more likely to pick as a suitable analogy? The Swedes? The British left? We're not "punishing" France to stop a genocidal attack on a neighboring country, as NATO did to Serbia in 1999; Serbia could hardly mount a diplomatic appeal to preserve its right to commit mass murder. France, on the other hand, will eagerly portray American "punishment" as a sign that America betrays its own principles regarding freedom of speech, and that America is not a trustworthy protector of liberty: America protects those who obey it, they'll say, and punishes those who dare to speak out. Do you really want to hand France that kind of propaganda victory?

And if the propaganda doesn't matter, if nations only act in terms of rational self-interest and never listen to irrational arguments, then how did the British end up losing their American colonies? Why is France opposing us when, from a rational point of view, French interests would be better served by quietly negotiating a deal under the table?

Steven Den Beste, as I said before, makes his arguments without considering these points, because he has deliberately blinded himself. His mantra is "I don't care why they hate us"—and he applies it not merely to Al Qaeda, but to any foreign entity. He declines to analyze the impact of American policy on other countries, even of a policy specifically designed to influence other countries, because that would require a cognitive exercise that he has declared off-limits. It's foolishly short-sighted to recommend a policy toward France without analyzing whether that policy will have the desired effect on France, and not some hypothetical robot country that reacts to stimuli like a rat in a Skinner experiment.

Oddly enough, I don't have a problem with many of the "punishments" that Steven proposes: I fully support individual and corporate decisions to find alternatives to French products, I think Japan or India would be a welcome replacement for France on the Security Council, I think we should be diplomatically civil but not friendly to France (and not snub them), and I think the Iraqi people will undoubtedly want to thank France appropriately for their role in propping up Saddam. But I shudder at formal government policy to "punish" France, and I cringe at Steven's logic when it's not supported by the evidence. Any overt attempt on our part to intimidate the French will have the opposite effect, and encourage them to continue playing David to our Goliath. We are already losing diplomatic battles we should be winning, due to the tone and delivery of our message (e.g., the Turkish parliamentary vote, Schröder's re-election campaign, et al.); let's not continue that trend.

Besides, if we're right about all this (and I think we are), we don't need to "punish" France. France will suffer the consequences of being on the wrong side of history, and the indignities of showing the world just how unreliable a partner and friend they are. If we really want to punish France, if we really want to wound their Gallic pride and frustrate them to no end, all we have to do is pat them on the head and go about our business. Imagine France's chagrin when we dutifully consult with Britain, Spain, Australia and Bulgaria about how best to administer post-Saddam Iraq, and France's unsolicited advice gets a polite nod and no action. For the French, that's a punishment far worse than economic boycotts or political snubs: It signals to them, and the rest of the world, that France is not important.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:44 pm. comments.

Saturday, 15 March 2003

Predictions. With the Iraq endgame almost in sight, I'll pull out the crystal ball and risk a few conjectures about how events will unfold over the next few weeks. (We can revisit these later and laugh at how wrong I was.)

• America's next move. Bush will address the nation, read the relevant sections from UNSC Resolution 1441, and announce that the United Nations has failed to live up to its obligations to America and failed to enforce its own plainly worded resolutions. He will not announce that America is withdrawing from the U.N., but he'll make it clear that America will not be bringing any of its security issues to the UNSC in the future—and that, once the dust has settled in Iraq, he intends to propose significant U.N. reforms (read: to eject France from its permanent Security Council seat). In the short term, the only part of the speech that will matter is the part giving Saddam a week or less to disarm and announcing the start date for military action.
• Britain's next move. Blair will tough it out and send Britain to war alongside the U.S., hoping for a fast, clean war without many casualties on either side. If this happens, which is likely, he will emerge with a personal victory—but with a lot of unanswered questions about the reliability and unity of Britain's Labor party, and how the U.K. will preserve its "special relationship" with the United States in light of the rift between America and some of Britain's European Union partners. More than any other player, Tony Blair would really benefit if Iraq's vaults and secret files revealed damning evidence of French or German collaboration with Saddam, as others in the blogosphere have speculated.
• Russia's next move. The Russians have calculated, correctly, that France is going to take the fall for whatever Russia does this round. If a resolution does actually come to a vote, there's a chance Russia will abstain at the last minute, to preserve some influence over post-war Iraq's oil contracts and debt repayments; otherwise they'll continue to play France for the fool, and try to leave Americans with the impression they could be convinced to abstain under certain (undefined) circumstances. It's a low-risk, no-lose scenario for the Russians, and with the relatively low stakes on the board for them, it's one they're happy to pursue.
• France's next move. Having made the maximum use of its Security Council seat to weaken Tony Blair and damage American interests, France will deliver its coup de grace after the dust settles in Iraq: A new UNSC proposal to declare Israel in "material breach" of UNSC Resolution 1435 (which it is), and threatening "serious consequences" unless the Israelis pull back to their pre-1967 borders and begin dismantling settlements. France will then pull out the diplomatic stops to decry "American hypocrisy" and portray the U.S. as all too eager to enforce UNSC resolutions against Arabs, but absent or veto-wielding when it's time to police the Jews. This will deepen the rift between America and France (to put it mildly), but if Chirac stays true to form this will not concern him—and in any case France will be looking to change the subject after the American-led coalition prevails in Iraq.
• Saddam's last move. Saddam almost certainly has a stash of nerve gas and some rockets squirreled away, but his diplomatic strategy has boxed him in: He can't threaten to use these weapons without admitting he has them, which eliminates their value as a deterrent. (His other problem is that these weapons aren't going to be that effective against the United States military, either: For well-prepared, highly mobile troops, "decon and move on" is the name of the game. The only effects of these weapons on American soldiers will be to delay them half an hour and really tick them off, which is probably not going to help Saddam any.) To use a weapon of mass destruction effectively, Saddam needed to be able to threaten retaliation against a fixed and valuable target—most likely Tel Aviv or Kuwait City—but either such threat would prompt an immediate call to arms, and at this late date it would simply trigger the invasion that's already on his doorstep. There are a few "vengeance" options that Saddam could pursue, such as handing over his smallpox cultures to an Al Qaeda agent as the bombs begin falling, but frankly that doesn't seem to be his style: He'll go down fighting, probably waste his chemical weapons in a futile attack (or lose them to Special Forces before the war begins), and then most likely die at the hands of his former subjects.
• The war itself will last for about as long as it takes an M1A1 Abrams tank to roll from the Kuwaiti border to the Baghdad city limits. The rules of the game change dramatically once the first American soldier's boot touches Iraqi soil; once that happens, the odds of Saddam remaining in power are nil, and most Iraqis aren't interested in dying for a lost cause. Casualties will be higher than in Afghanistan, but lower than the number of civilian deaths that would have resulted if Saddam had remained in power for the rest of 2003.
• North Korea will begin an all-out effort to produce enriched uranium within 72 hours of the war's start. Beyond that I won't try to predict the behavior of Kim Jong Il; he's just too insane. I suspect, though, that before it's all over at least some part of North Korea will be radioactive.
• Iran will experience a popular uprising against the hard-line clerics, which will probably succeed without much in the way of outside help: Once the Iranians see their neighbors getting a liberal democracy, they're going to want one of their own. With the American military machine parked next door in Iraq, the mullahs will be unable to bring out the heavy guns and crack down on civil unrest. A cautiously friendly government (about as friendly as Jordan, say) will rise to power, and end Iranian funding of Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

• Germany will experience a wave of self-doubt as the Americans pack up and leave their army bases, never to return: The troops who depart Germany for Iraq will not be coming back again. Schröder will leave office in disgrace (though perhaps not immediately), having gained nothing and lost much from his anti-American misadventure.

• And what of Al Qaeda? I think they may have been trying to stage a major terrorist attack on American soil to coincide with the start of hostilities, but with the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed those plans may have been disrupted or compromised. I don't believe the rumors that Osama bin Laden has been captured, but the evidence coming from Pakistan suggests rather strongly that he's still alive—which means, of course, that he's up to no good. They'll launch an attack in the first week of the war, but it'll be something on the order of Kenya or Bali: A truck bomb against a "soft" target, with little to no effect on the Great Game.

That's ten forecasts; we'll look at them again in a month and see how I did.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 2:18 am. comments.

Monday, 10 March 2003

I sense a great disturbance. More Australian intel, this time from a source inside the White House....

INTERIOR: WHITE HOUSE -- CONFERENCE ROOM.

Eight senior government officials sit around a black conference table. Imperial stormtroopers stand guard around the room. TOM RIDGE, a young Cabinet member, is speaking.

RIDGE: Until our missile shield is fully operational we are vulnerable. The Iraqis are too well equipped. They're more dangerous than you realize.

RUMSFELD: Dangerous to your duct-tape brigade, Ridge, not to our soldiers!

RIDGE: The French will continue to gain support in the Security Council as long as....

Suddenly all heads turn as RIDGE's speech is cut short and DICK CHENEY enters. He is followed by his powerful ally, The Secretary of State, COLIN POWELL. All of the officials stand and bow before the Veep as he takes his place at the head of the table. The Secretary stands behind him.

CHENEY: The Security Council will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the President has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the United Nations have been swept away.

RIDGE: That's impossible! How will the President maintain control without the bureaucracy?

CHENEY: The regional army bases now have direct control over territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of our armed forces.

RIDGE: And what of the French passing information to Iraq? If the Iraqis have obtained a technical readout of our battle plans, it is possible, however unlikely, that they might find a weakness and exploit it.

POWELL: The plans you refer to will soon be back in our hands.

RUMSFELD: Any attack made by Iraq against our armed forces would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they've obtained. Our military is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it!

POWELL: Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a nation is insignificant next to the power of diplomacy.

RUMSFELD: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Powell. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up support from Old Europe, or given you clairvoyance enough to find Iraq's hidden weap—

Suddenly RUMSFELD chokes and starts to turn blue under POWELL's spell.

POWELL: I find your lack of tact... disturbing.

CHENEY: Enough of this! Powell, release him!

POWELL: As you wish.

CHENEY: This bickering is pointless. Secretary Powell will provide us with the location of the French holdouts by the time our missile shield is operational. We will then crush the Rebellion with one swift stroke.

Just as I suspected. I knew this foreign policy was familiar from somewhere....

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 9:13 am. comments.

Thursday, 06 March 2003

Facing the future: Last week I wrote that the Democratic Party risked sliding into irrelevance if it did not directly address the issue of terrorism: You can't win elections after 9/11 without a foreign policy, and you can't develop policy by just reacting to what the other party does. If the Democrats are to succeed in 2004 and beyond, they must present a foreign policy that is principled, consistent, and credible enough to attract voters (or, at the very least, that is sufficient to stem the tide of voters who would otherwise defect from the party).

Carping from the sidelines is a lot easier than offering real suggestions for what the Democrats should adopt as policy, though. It's easier to criticize than it is to create, and I don't claim that I have all the answers. But I do know what I'd like to see, and I think I can put together a statement of policy that would give the Republicans a run for their money (so to speak). For better or worse, here's the foreign policy theme that I think the Democrats should adopt.

Note that in several places below I use the words "we" and "us" to refer to the Democrats. This is not so much an expression of my personal party affiliation (I have none) as much as that it becomes awkward to write a statement of policy without using the first person.

Democratic policy must be true to Democratic principles. It must speak to the party's legacy of protecting human rights, and of promoting justice and equality. It must appeal to the party's history of multilateral engagement, of reaching out to other nations and helping them reach their potential. The Democrats fought and won World Wars, created the Marshall Plan and the United Nations, sent men to the Moon, fought for civil rights, and embraced the future where others feared it.

Where the Republicans deride the United Nations as a sterile debating society, the Democrats remember why our party created it: To provide the world with alternatives to war. By exploring all possible options on Iraq, the U.N. is doing exactly what it was designed to do, and America as a peace-loving nation encourages all sincere efforts to achieve a peaceful and satisfying resolution to the Iraq situation. Disparaging the U.N. is harmful to long-term American interests; our thoughtful criticisms are offered in the spirit of improving the United Nations, not of casting the U.N. aside.

Nonetheless, America must provide for the defense of its citizens, and we cannot make our security subject to international veto. The U.S. is the primary target of the enemies of freedom, and we will be patient but firm in our resolve to end the threat of terrorism and remove the conditions that support it. To paraphrase President Harry Truman, terrorism flourishes where the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must rekindle that hope in the hearts of those whom Al Qaeda would poison with hatred; we must open the eyes of those whom Saddam Hussein would blind with lies and deceptions.

We must shift the global debate on Iraq from a pedantic discussion of inspections to a moral question of justice. The Iraqi people cry out for freedom, and it is within the U.N.'s mandate and the U.S.'s ability to grant it; with that power to act comes the obligation to act, lest we become morally culpable. As Paulo Friere famously declared, washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. We cannot be neutral on the question of Saddam Hussein. If not for his sponsorship of terrorism, if not for his pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, if not for his genocide of Kurds and Marsh Arabs, if not for his torture and murder of dissidents, if not for his wars of aggression, if not for his continuing defiance of the United Nations—if not for all these compelling casus belli, then for the cause of freedom and democracy, in the name of justice and liberty, and for the welfare and security of the United States and the world, we will see Saddam Hussein removed from power.

Our efforts to remove Saddam Hussein will be as humane and considerate of life as possible. While we recognize that war is deadly, we also know Saddam's reign of terror has already ended the lives of millions—and we remember that our efforts in Afghanistan saved thousands from famine and millions from tyranny. Our designs on Iraq are no different from our demonstrated intentions in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Grenada, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, the Philippines, and every other nation that has known the American soldier: To give the country back to its own people, and set up the conditions for democracy to flourish. If we have made these nations our vassals, then strange indeed is the American empire; if we have seized their resources, then history does not record it.

America's role at home and abroad must be the same: To secure the blessings of liberty and preserve the unalienable rights of the individual. We will remember the words of Benjamin Franklin, and give up no essential liberty for the sake of temporary safety; our greatest safety comes not from surrendering our freedoms, but from protecting them to the utmost. We will not judge our enemies by their race or religion, for the enemies of freedom come in every guise; we will not deny any person their sacred rights under national and international law. We will battle terrorism not only by fighting the fanatics and tyrants, but by fighting against poverty, hunger and despair; the dark and desperate corners of the world will know our generosity of spirit as well as our ferocity in defense of freedom.

The Democratic Party remembers the mistakes of history. We remember the end of World War I and the punishing Treaty of Versailles, which served only to ensure that Europe would go to war again. We remember the Boston Tea Party and the punishing Intolerable Acts, which served only to ensure that the Colonies were united in rebellion. We remember these incidents in light of the recent calls by our Republican colleagues to "punish" nations who oppose our policies on Iraq. We must respectfully disagree with their premise. We believe that history will punish the mistakes of other nations far more ably than any effort of ours—and that America should mete out punishments no more eagerly than it would be prepared to accept them. Though America holds a unique position in the community of nations, we do not presume to be a master among servants: It is our fondest hope that other nations will rise to join us in prosperity and freedom, not rise against us in fear of our wrath.

The Democrats will repair and strengthen the ties that join nations in mutual trust and regard. We will renew America's commitment to NATO, and support international treaties to preserve the environment, ban chemical weapons, and bring war criminals to justice. We will restore the lost art of diplomacy to American foreign policy, and treat other nations with dignity and respect; we recognize that America is held to a higher standard than other nations, and we will exceed that standard. We believe as Americans that we must dedicate ourselves not to a unilateral "war on terror," but to a multilateral effort promoting democracy, protecting human rights, and providing hope to those who would else despair.

We are patriots and liberals in the truest sense: We love America and believe no country has done more to bring freedom and justice to the world. We believe liberty and equality are not merely the ideals of a nation, but the universal birthright of all humanity. We believe America's strength comes not only from its military stature, but from its moral prestige: We believe peace and stability are preserved for all nations when America embraces the foundations of international law.

Now, this is a policy statement that may not be popular with many of the anti-war protesters who are marching in the streets these days. With all due respect to the protesters, though, I have to warn the Democrats: The most you can gain by courting the anti-war vote is the 2.7% you lost to Nader in 2000, and you'll lose at least 5-10% of the centrists for siding with Saddam and the French. There was a time and place where you could have made a principled stand against war in Iraq; the time was the summer of 2002, and the place was the Senate floor. Opposing the war now is politically futile and morally inconsistent. Don't do it.

Where the Democrats should make their case is where the Republicans are weakest: They should push their talents for building multinational coalitions and holding them together. They should point out that we didn't need to withdraw from the ABM treaty to conduct our ABM tests, and how that mistake two years ago kept Russia out of our corner. They should remind voters that Bush alienated Europe not once but several times, and that it is not in America's long-term interest to do this.

Whatever the outcome of the war in Iraq, the outcome for America's relations with Europe, Russia, and China is already clear: They have been badly damaged, and more so than was necessary. Bush will campaign on a "war President" theme; the Democrats must stress Bush's reckless mishandling of the U.N. debate. Democrats should remind voters how Britain's heavy-handed treatment of the Colonies sparked a revolution 227 years ago, and pointedly ask whether we want to repeat that history with Bush in the role of King George.

That's what I would do, anyway. I haven't tried to address the Democratic problem of finding a candidate, any of the Democratic issues on domestic policy (which has been their strong suit over the past decade), and goodness knows what adopting these positions would do to a candidate's chances of winning the nomination, which is always a problem for both parties: Their primaries filter out candidates most likely to appeal to the swing voters. (McCain would have trounced Gore, but he couldn't get past South Carolina.) But I think this is a starting point.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 10:41 am. comments.

Monday, 03 March 2003

As ye sow, so shall ye reap: At this very moment, the Bush Administration is desperately trying to call in its markers and muster up nine votes in the Security Council, to pass a second resolution sanctioning the use of force in Iraq. The only problem is, Dubya hasn't placed any markers. This is the time where Bush's sins of isolationism come back to haunt him.

A leader with more foresight might be calling up Vladimir Putin right now, and saying "Vlad, remember that discussion we had a couple of years ago about the ABM treaty? You remember how badly I wanted to pull out of the treaty, and we talked about how that would damage your credibility with the hard-liners in Russia, and make it more difficult for you to back America in the future? Well, that was why we agreed to keep the ABM treaty alive, and negotiated that amendment allowing us to test ABM systems without deploying; we won't be ready to deploy for another ten years anyway, so that worked out well for both of us. Now I need you to return the favor, and support us on this UN resolution."

Or, he might be on the phone to Germany's Edmund Stoiber: "Edmund, remember your election campaign against Gerhard Schröder? Remember how my administration ignored Schröder's anti-American rhetoric, and let him sound like a shrill panderer while you and I looked like statesmen? (Rummy wanted to snub Schröder's defense minister at the NATO conference last fall, but I overruled him: We have an old saying in Texas about catching more flies with honey than vinegar. I think Schröder was hoping we'd overreact and distract voters' attention from the economy.) I know the German people are opposed to war, but I also know they value German-American friendship and cooperation; that's one of the reasons Germany elected you over Schröder, and one reason why I hope we'll have your vote at the UN."

Or he could be twisting Chirac's arm: "Jacques, I took a lot of heat for supporting Europe's treaties on land mines and the International Criminal Court; there are still lots of people on my side of the ocean who view those treaties with deep suspicion, and that's why Congress has been so reluctant to ratify them. I know you're concerned about war in the Middle East—who in their right mind wouldn't be?—but a lot of my people are looking at this UN thing as a test of France's commitment to multilateralism. If France and America break ranks now, then I doubt those treaties of yours will ever get ratified."

Bush is, as others have noted, from the Jacksonian school of American politics—and the Jacksonians are famously poor at diplomacy. They understand carrots and sticks, but everything else they hold in contempt: Subtlety and finesse are those things you do when your stick isn't big enough to get the job done. One can almost imagine Dubya sending Colin Powell to the UN, with instructions to "go diplomatize them varmints." American bids for Turkish and Mexican support have the raw appeal of an open checkbook; Jacksonians cry that if America must choose between being loved and being feared, then we'll be feared—without stopping to ask if worldwide fear is really in America's interest, or who the hell limited our choices to only these two options. No amount of diplomacy will make Al Qaeda love us, but there's plenty that could be done (and should be done) to keep Europe and Russia from fearing us.

Ultimately I think Bush will clear this hurdle, for the same reason that Resolution 1441 passed 15-0: Nobody likes to lose, and France will preserve its United Nations card to play another day. But Bush's isolationist tendencies have made this hurdle higher than it should be; I doubt we never had a chance of bringing France around on Iraq, but we should have been able to paint them into a corner much more easily than this.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 8:20 am. comments.