Media Manipulates the "End" of the War in Iraq

Originally published at Truthout.


Just as the media lied to help us get into a war, they are now lying us out of one.

In the introduction to season five of HBO's critically acclaimed series, "The Wire," Det. Bunk Moreland and fellow murder investigators laughed as they duped a hapless, young street gangster into confessing to a murder by pretending a copy machine was a polygraph test. "The bigger the lie, the more they believe," he said.

The statement reflects the political dialogue in this country perfectly over the last month, ever since Barack Obama touted the troop drawdown in Iraq in an August 2 speech in Atlanta and leading up to tonight's Oval Address celebrating the "end of combat operations in Iraq." The president, the DC establishment and the media have been perpetuating a lie on a massive scale: the war in Iraq is now over, they claim.

But this is patently misleading, as Andrew Bacevich, of Boston University noted in a recent essay. "For the rest of us to pretend that this unnecessary and ill-advised war has ended would only add one more lie to a pile that is already too large," Bacevich said, noting that internal strife between sects, an increasingly defiant Kurdistan and recent attacks in Baghdad, prove that the war in Iraq is by no means over.

Sadly, it is not merely the president and others who have a political motive for perpetuating the myth that the United States has ended out national nightmare in Iraq. More troubling has been the performance of the mainstream media, which, in print and on television, have been witting pawns in this massive deception, reporting on the war as if it were truly over, celebrating this historical moment and ignoring crucial details, as they mislead the American public about the nature of the US role in Iraq. The woeful media performance is just the latest of what has been an especially regrettable eight years of media coverage of Iraq

Read the rest here.

Doctrinaire Assumptions and the US media

PBS will soon be airing a new episode of Frontline, called Bush’s War. Frontline is one of the better news shows on American television. An episode in 2006 focused on Dick Cheney (“The Dark Side”) brought attention to some important elements of the Bush Administration, namely the way they pressured the CIA into “finding intelligence” to justify a war in Iraq. A 4-part series (“The News Wars) also focused, rightly, on the establishment media’s woeful reporting leading up the war. In comparison to most US media — especially on television —PBS takes a deeper look at issues and has much more time for nuance and explanation.

Nonetheless, the program still works within the same framework of basic assumptions that dominates the national media and the academic establishment. These assumptions serve to limit institutional analysis, narrow the parameters of debate, and generally serve the interests of the country’s most powerful structures: the state and corporate interests. In an effort to highlight these assumptions I will make some predictions about tonight’s program. It is worth noting that is not meant to merely point out problems with Frontline’s coverage; it is my belief that these assumptions can be applied to coverage from any of the major national print and broadcast media outlets, as well as in a the majority of contemporary scholarship. That Frontline’s coverage is much more aggressive in their investigative journalism than the majority of US media outlets, and is described as liberal or left by many critics, only further illustrates how pervasive these assumptions are across the spectrum of political debate in the United States.

1) The concept of international legality of the invasion of Iraq, or any other US-led interventions will not be mentioned.

The media will certainly cite violations of international law committed by other countries — especially those that are not US allies. The prediction here is that US foreign policy, in particular, will not be viewed through the lens of international law.

Ethan Brossner, the deputy foreign editor of the New York Times, was quite accurate when she told Asharq Al-Awsat, an English-language Arabic newspaper based in London, “we stay away from assertions of legality on most international issues, because law is less clear about international affairs than about national affairs:

Her statement is backed up by the output of the international section of the Times. Not once, for example, did the Times write an article questioning the legality of the War on Terror. This would seem to be a very basic question: does US’s stated foreign policy adhere to international law? But the subject simply never came up.

It would likely be of some interest to the public, that at the Nuremberg trials, it was ruled that preventive wars are the “supreme crime” a nation can commit. Or, that following World War I, sixty-three nations — including “coalition of the willing” members, the US, the UK and Australia — renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy in the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. The signing nations “solemnly declare[d] in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.” Despite this, when President bush announced, at West Point in 2002 and again at his inauguration speech in January 2005, that his foreign policy was to use force as a means to “spread democracy,” the media simply failed to report that it violated international law that the US helped put into place.

This tendency can be seen quite clearly when assessing the coverage of the conflict in Israel and Palestine as well. The Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” This clearly outlaws Israel’s settlement activity, which as of this writing (March 23 2008) has been expanding. Yet, as Howard Friel and Richard Falk report in their book, Israel-Palestine On Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East: “These 19 words, which outlaw all of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and which easily fit into any newspaper editorial or news article, were not printed or cited by the New York Times from September 29, 2000 to December 31, 2006—the broadest period covered by this volume.”

A search from December 31, 2006 to March 23, 2008, reveals that the pattern has held since Falk and Friel conducted their research.

The New York Times is hardly alone in ignoring international law. This is the norm for major American media across the board, including PBS. Hence my prediction that international law will not be a focus of “Bush’s War.”

2.) It will be assumed that the War in Iraq was waged in order to “liberate” the Iraqi people from a tyrant, and pave the way for democracy to flourish in the Middle East. The idea that US foreign policy is based, not on benevolence and a love of democracy, but rather to serve its own geopolitical positioning, will not be discussed.

In 2008, criticism of the War in Iraq is relatively common. But, by in large, the charge is that the War is a case of benevolent intentions gone awry. The typical criticism assumes that the United States wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East, but tactical mistakes and narrow-minded neoconservative ideologues ruined the project. The war in Iraq is a tragedy because it was lost, the narrative goes, not because it was immoral, illegal, or done to serve US interests.

Even from the fiercest critics in mainstream circles, the idea that United States invaded Iraq to serve its own geopolitical and economic interests is simply not broached.

This is especially curious, since the US military has stated quite clearly, what its foreign policy objectives are, and this information is public and widely available online. For example, a document called Joint Vision 2020, which was prepared the vision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the start of the Bush presidency, states that the US must achieve “full spectrum dominance” meaning they must have “access to and freedom to operate in all domains – space, sea, land, air, and information” so they can “maintain the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance.” The 40-page document does not contain the word democracy.

In 2006, the Department of Defense released the Quadrennial Defense Review Report, which supports the idea that US foreign policy is based on becoming an unrivaled, permanent superpower. The report, which outlines the objectives of the Department of Defense, is released every four years and is considered the main documenting articulating US military doctrine. Yet, this document, like Joint Vision 2020, is virtually ignored by the major media.

Interestingly, in contrast to the mainstream media, at least one scholarly journal analyzed the true aims of US foreign policy in the post- 9-11 world was Foreign Affairs — the major foreign policy journal in the United States. In 2002, they published an article by G. John Ikenberry (viewed as a liberal in academic circles) called “America’s Imperial Strategy” which said the principal goal of US foreign policy in, “Next American Century” was, according to Richard Haass, policy planning director at the State Department, “to integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements that will sustain a world consistent with U.S. interests and values” Of course, Foreign Affairs is read primarily by academics and politicians, and barely dents the American public. Whereas the mainstream media, such as the Times and PBS – neither of whom mentioned the Foreign Affairs article or Haass’ statement — not only penetrates a much larger audience, but also serves to shape public debate far more broadly.

It is my prediction that PBS Frontline, will ignore the stated foreign policy aims of the United States, as outlined by their own planning documents and the major foreign policy journal, and continue to assume that the goal of the United States was not to use “full spectrum domination” to assert its economic and political dominance across the world.

WSJ: US will stay in Iraq, no matter who wins the presidency

An article in Friday's Wall Street Journal, notes that the Democratic nominees will not have a a full withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Despite the rhetoric of the Democratic presidential candidates, significant numbers of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq regardless who wins in November .... senior adviser said that Mr. Obama was comfortable with a long-term U.S. troop presence of around five brigades, which -- depending on the numbers of support troops and other personnel -- would likely leave around 35,000 troops in Iraq. Sen. Clinton takes a similar approach

This will not surprise anyone who follows US foreign policy closely. As Steve correctly observed in his excellent piece, The Obama Doctrine:

"there will certainly be a long-term US presence in Iraq. The money that was poured into the war in the interest of securing permanent military basing in the heart of the world's remaining energy reserves will not have been spent in vain. What will happen, however, is a gradual troop reduction over the course of the next administration amid much fanfare from the media and academia.

It is, I think, worth the effort in reminding readers that of the reality of this situation as the democrats (and much of the media) often portray the race in a way that might give people the false impression that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will end the war while in office. The reality, however, is they will just scale back on troop levels and sell it as an end to the war. This is obviously preferable to John McCain's position on the war who calls the war a success and says he would be willing to keep US forces there upwards of "1000 years". He also made the absurd claim that a US withdrawal would result in al Qaeda taking over the country. This shows that McCain is either a liar or a complete idiot. I suspect it is the former, but in either case, it does not reflect well on the Arizona lawmaker (Juan Cole has more on this, here).

But, despite the obvious contrast between the Democrats and McCain, voters ought to know that Obama and Clinton do not have any specific plans to bring all the troops home. This means that it will be the responsibility of the anti-war movement to raise hell, and demand a troop withdrawal, now, all the way through the conventions and into the next presidential term -- no matter who is in the seat of power.

The Left and Barack Obama: The good, the bad and the empty

It was somewhat amusing to watch Hillary Clinton as her campaign, once widely thought to be invincible, began to fall apart. Facing the increasing likelihood of losing the nomination to Mr. Hope himself, Clinton took to outright mockery in describing the junior senator from Illinois and his seductive narrative of hope, unity and change.

“I could just stand up here and say ’Let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified,’” she told supporters at a rally in Providence, Rhode Island. “The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.”

At this stage of Clinton’s flailing campaign, the move comes off as desperate. With polls showing a likely Obama triumph, the Clinton camp has had to pull out all the stops – including accusing Obama of disloyalty to Israel in the latest Newsweek cover story. Still, we have to admit: she has a point. While Obama’s stump speeches speak glowingly of dramatic change, his policies fail to match up; in fact, his policy positions are, in many cases, barely distinguishable from those of Clinton. And on some crucial domestic issues, he is actually outflanking her from the right.

Of course, there are some positives about the Obama phenomenon. First, he is clearly preferable to Clinton, whose record (in the senate and as first lady) on trade, welfare, gay marriage, the War in Iraq, and media regulation has been horrendous. Obama, a one-term Senator with a background as a community organizer, is far less entrenched in the Washington establishment than Clinton. Further, he opposed the invasion of Iraq and supports some level of diplomacy with Iran, Venezuela and other countries that have typically poor relations with the US.

More important, I think, is the mass outpouring of grassroots support that Obama has received. While I doubt very much that Obama is the vehicle for change his supporters think he is, the fact that millions of Americans have donated time, money and sweat into trying to make this country a little more humane, speaks volumes about the American peoples’ desire for change. This shows the very real potential for more significant social movements to succeed in the not-so-distant future.

And, this happens at a time when the conservative movement, once monolithic in its control of all three branches of government, is collapsing due to poor leadership and a sharp disconnect with the American public on foreign and domestic policy.

These are all positive things. But we lose out by romanticizing Obama’s platform –which is still well to the right of the majority of the public on virtually all of the crucial issues.

Obama and foreign policy

Since the executive branch has far more influence over foreign affairs than it does over domestic issues, it makes sense to begin there. As I noted, Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, But Obama’s record since that vote has been pretty dismal.

For starters, Obama has voted repeatedly to fund the war he opposed. As Dennis Kucinich noted last year,

“[Obama's] voted to fund the war at least ten times, each time, it's like reauthorizing it all over again. If they keep voting to fund the war, it's not credible to say they are for peace.”

In fact, just when members of the newly-elected 110^th congress were beginning to square off against Bush over Iraq legislation lst March, Obama made a point to cave into the president, asserting that he does not want “to play chicken with our troops,” by threatening to cut of funding for the war.

And even now that Obama is trying to run as the anti-war candidate, he still refused to say he would have the troops out by 2013.

Obama defended his record to reporters. "I have been very clear even as a candidate that, once we were in (Iraq), that we were going to have some responsibility to make it work as best we could,” he said.

On foreign issues other than Iraq, Obama offers even less substantive change. For starters Obama is an unambiguous interventionist. When Obama gave a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs outlining his foreign policy views, Robert Kagan, one of the world’s foremost hawks, who along with Bill Kristol co-founded PNAC, wrote glowingly about it.

“America must ‘lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.’ With those words, Barack Obama put an end to the idea that the alleged overexuberant idealism and America-centric hubris of the past six years is about to give way to a new realism, a more limited and modest view of American interests, capabilities and responsibilities.”

One can only imagine Kagen, a staunch unilateralist, also enjoyed Obama’s expressed willingness to “attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government.” Obama’s piece in Foreign Affairs should likewise put to rest any idea that he is seeks to lessen the United States’ interventionist ways. In this piece he praises Roosevelt and Kennedy for building strong militaries and asserting US dominance around the world.

In terms of the Middle East, it comes as no surprise that Obama has taken a very assertive pro-Israel stance: all Democrats take a pro-Israel stance, especially ones that hope to become president.

But when Obama gave a speech in front of AIPAC, he was so egregious in his pandering that he drew jubilant praise from some of the most hawkish supporters of Israel in the media today. Samuel Rosner, arguably the most pro-Israel voice at Haaretz, said Obama was “as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Guliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period.”

Marty Peretz, the editor-at-large of the New Republic, and a chronic apologist for Israeli war crimes, was also impressed. He said of the speech:

“I believe he must have satisfied (nearly) all of those who had been skeptical of his grasp of the Israeli conundrum. Very much satisfied them. Me, included. (His was an extremely sophisticated analysis.) And he must also have disillusioned all of those who'd hoped--like the lefty blogosphere--that he'd be oh-so-sympathetic to the self-inflicted Palestinians.”

Indeed, Obama was no such thing. He said that Israel was "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," He added, "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs" which would "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza."

“As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles,” noted Ali Abunimah in Electronic Intifada.

Further, David Sirota has noted Obama’s connection to at least one big-wig in the defense industry.

“Buried at the very bottom of a New York Times story marveling at Barack Obama’s ability to shakedown wealthy Chicago scions for big cash, we find out that one of the Illinois senator’s biggest donors is the family that owns one of the largest defense contractors in the world, General Dynamics. What a shock, then, that Obama hasn’t discussed our bloated military budget even though polls show the public wants that budget reeled in.”

And this is just scratching the surface of Obama’s non-progressive ways. As Paul Street observes, Obama voted to reauthorize the USA PATRIOT ACT, gave his valuable support to neoconservative Sen. Joe Lieberman (I- CONN) as he faced off against his anti-war challenger Ned Lamont, voted to approve Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state and opposed Sen. Feingold’s move to censure Bush for his illegal wiretapping of US citizens.

Obama and Domestic Policy

As bad as his foreign policy positions are, they are still unambiguously to the left of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. The same can not be said of his domestic platform, where Obama has been especially disappointing. His policy positions, in some cases are to the right of Clinton’s.

For starters, as Robert Kuttner observed in an excellent article for the American Prospect, Obama has strong ties to Richard Rubin, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and the chief economic strategist for Democrats throughout the Clinton years. Rubin represents the old neoliberal thinking that dominated the 90s; he is also a key player in the Hamilton Project, which as Kuttner notes, is dedicated to promoting “free capital movements.” They also flirt with privatizing social security.

That Obama has solicited the help of Rubin is a sure sign that, despite the countries growing antipathy for neoliberalism, he will not be endorsing any kind of substantively different economic word view. Kuttner writes:

“If the Rubin doctrine again dominates the Democrats' pocketbook program, it will once again blunt the Democrats' (now resurgent) appeal as the party of the common American.”

And indeed the extent of Obama’s Rubinization is evident in his campaign. On health care, he favors a plan that, while similar to Clinton’s, is slightly less ambitious. This is mainly because Obama concedes his plan, which unlike Clinton’s (and Edward’s) plans do not require one buy insurance, will leave a few million without insurance; Clinton claims her plan cover everyone, which, as Harvard’s Steffie Woolhandler notes, “is pure fantasy.”

Reasonable people can disagree over which nominee’s flawed plan is less bad.None of these candidates are anywhere close to the public on health care. 56 percent of the country said they would support a single-payer plan “like Medicare” to our current program. Further, the country is willing to pay higher taxes to see such a plan implemented. What’s more, there is a bill, HR676, which would provide Medicare for all. It has more than 80 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, but Obama, like a lot of Democrats, will not go near it.

But what is especially unsettling about Obama on this issue, is the angle he has taken in critiquing the other’s health care plan. As Paul Krugman observed in the New York Times:

“[L]ately Mr. Obama has been stressing his differences with his rivals by attacking their plans from the right — which means that he has been giving credence to false talking points that will be used against any Democratic health care plan a couple of years from now …. by echoing the talking points of those who oppose any form of universal health care, he’s making the task of any future president who tries to deliver universal care considerably more difficult.

Obama has used the same approach on Social Security. He continues to perpetuate the right-wing myth that Social Security is in some kind of fiscal crises. These talking points are designed by conservatives to dismantle one of the lasting relics from the New Deal, and Obama, by repeating them, only helps this myth gain traction. “Everyone knows Social Security, as it’s constructed, is not going to be in the same place it’s going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives,” Obama told Tim Russert on Meet the Press.

Krugman, again, takes issue with this assessment.

“But the ‘everyone’ who knows that Social Security is doomed doesn’t include anyone who actually understands the numbers. In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided. As Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, put it in a recent article co-authored with senior analyst Philip Ellis: “The long-term fiscal condition of the United States has been largely misdiagnosed. Despite all the attention paid to demographic challenges, such as the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation, our country’s financial health will in fact be determined primarily by the growth rate of per capita health care costs.”

Indeed, Obama has literally taken to praising the vision of Ronald Reagan who he views as a man of bold ideas.

“I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

Matt Stoller, a blogger from MYDD observed that Obama “agrees with Reagan's basic frame that the 1960s and 1970s were full of 'excesses' and that government had grown large and unaccountable. Those excesses, of course, were feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement. The libertarian anti-government ideology of an unaccountable large liberal government was designed by ideological conservative to take advantage of the backlash against these 'excesses.'”

All in all, I think David Sirota may have put it best. Obama, he observes, is only

“interested in fighting only for those changes that fit within the existing boundaries of what’s considered mainstream in Washington, instead of using his platform to redefine those boundaries. This posture, comes even as polls consistently show that Washington’s definition of mainstream is divorced from the rest of the country’s (for example, politicians’ refusal to debate the war even as polls show that Americans want the troops home).”

Voting for Obama?

Steven Maher recently told me that he was surprised that consumer-advocate Ralph Nader decided to run for president. He thought Nader might endorse Obama this year.

I was less surprised. As I noted earlier, there is in fact much to be excited about in regards to the Obama campaign: he would be the first black president, he has a decent background, he has energetic well-meaning grassroots supporters and so forth. But, when you really look at what Obama is offering, it represents a lot more of the same.

This is not to say one should not vote for Obama; in most states voting for Obama makes a lot of sense. The differences between Obama and McCain are not as big as many of us would like to see, but they are different enough to affect thousands of lives. But I do not think it is credible to say that Obama has taken enough bold steps to bypass a third-party challenge from the left. His weakness on health care and the military budget alone, are reason enough to expect such efforts, no matter how futile.

Indeed, Obama’s rhetoric, if not his policies, have moved to the left. This is true of Edwards and Clinton as well. The candidates understand that the public is outraged about the economy, our failing health care system and our endless wars. And so, unlike previous elections, they feel compelled to address these issues.

This is the true lesson of the Obama phenomenon. Politicians do not bring change, people do. And the best way to facilitate change is not to get behind a candidate, but to force them to take better stands on issues.

As Howard Zinn recently wrote:

Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the Thirties, for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between the two parties may be a matter of life and death ... Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes-the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

The NIE and its Discontents

It has been quite interesting watching some of the more hawkish elements of society react to the latest National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran shut down their nuclear weapons program in 2003.

One might think that the reaction to the report, even among hawks, would have been one of relief. After all, the intelligence shows that Iran is far away from having a nuclear weapon, and the report mutes the war drums that Cheney et al have been pounding for years.

In short, a war may have been averted, as a result of this report. Sadly, however, there are some who seem rather disappointed by this.

Much of this discontent has come from the Knesset. Haaretz is reporting that Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, thinks the US report was simply wrong.

"Something went wrong in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat," Dichter said. "We have to hope that the U.S. will know to correct this. Israel and other states must help in any way including providing intelligence material so as to fix this miscalculation."

Alan Dershowtiz, arguably the most prominent apologists for war crimes alive, called the intelligence "stupid."

The recent national intelligence estimate that concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is just about the stupidest intelligence assessment I have ever read. It falls hook, line and sinker for a transparent bait and switch tactic employed not only by Iran, but by several other nuclear powers in the past ....If Neville Chamberlain weren't long dead I would wonder whether he had a hand in writing this "peace in our time" intelligence fiasco.

(Gary Hart, called the Dershowitz piece "not only hysterical but almost catatonic.")

Jeff Jacoby, a hawkish columnist for the Globe, not only attacked the report, but also said it was evidence that the Iraq war was a success. He wrote:

Chalk up another win for the Iraq war. If the NIE is taken at face value, the mullahs stopped their efforts to weaponize uranium in 2003 "primarily in response to international pressure." Now to what could that be referring? There is only one plausible candidate: the US-led invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein ... The failures of the Iraq war are frequently denounced. All the more reason to take note of its accomplishments.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, echoes Jacoby's remarks with even more cartoonish comments.

President Bush's successful shift in strategy in Iraq a year ago, as part of his commitment to finishing that job, remains his greatest contribution to peace in the Middle East. The complete and unequivocal defeat of al Qaeda and of Iranian-backed proxies in Iraq is the best way to show Iran that the United States is a serious power to be reckoned with in the region. Resisting the temptation to throw away success in Iraq by drawing down too fast or too deep is the greatest service this president can render his successor. Only if Bush wins in Iraq will the next president have a reasonable chance to defeat the threat of a nuclear-weapons-seeking Islamic Republic of Iran.

Many Republican senators seem a little upset by all of this as well, including some of the presidential candidates.

This is par for the course when you have leaders who look to war as the first option, rather than as a last resort.

Mahdi Army: the next Hezbollah?

The rather absurd idea that "the surge" has been a success -- a notion has been repeated by Democrats and Republicans -- often fails to overlook one crucial point: the fact that al-Sadr (probably the most powerful person in Iraq) has ordered that the militias in the Mahdi Army be frozen. That was in late August. Soon after reports about the success of the surge were rampant.

In anycase, Sam Dagher, of the Christian Science Monitor, has an interesting article about how the Mahdi Army is trying to mirror Hezbollah, another Shiite group that has become a serious force, both politically and militarily.

He writes:

For more than three months, the Mahdi Army has been largely silent. The potent, black-clad Iraqi Shiite force put down its guns in late August at the behest of Moqtada al-Sadr.

The move has bolstered improved security in Baghdad, even though the US says some Mahdi Army splinter groups that it calls "criminals" or "extremists" have not heeded Mr. Sadr's freeze.

Away from public view, however, Sadr's top aides say the anti-American cleric is anything but idle. Instead, he is orchestrating a revival among his army of loyalists entrenched in Baghdad and Shiite enclaves to the south – from the religious centers of Karbala and Najaf to the economic hub of Basra. What is in the making, they say, is a better-trained and leaner force free of rogue elements accused of atrocities and crimes during the height of the sectarian war last year.

Many analysts say what may reemerge is an Iraqi version of Lebanon's Hizbullah – a state within a state that embraces politics while maintaining a separate military and social structure that holds powerful sway at home and in the region.

Dagher adds that the aim of the Mahdi Army, is not to be a player in a unity government, but rather, to serve as a "national resistance force" much like Hezbollah.

As for Sadr's intent, his spokesman in Najaf, Salah al-Obeidi, says: "We have new visions for what the Mahdi Army will do in the next phase."

Mr. Obeidi explains that most Shiite parties have embraced the political process wholeheartedly and accept the presence of US forces, while the Sadrists, who continue to oppose it, need to keep their Army as a "national resistance force."

Obama's cross-party appeal?

Phil Primeau is right to point out that Barack Obama does have a somewhat curious cross-party appeal. However, this support — like Obama's campaign — seems a little empty.

For example, his piece does not point out one specific policy position that would make Obama attractive to Republicans or to anyone. This is not Primeau's fault: Obama does not care much for policy specifics, but rather enjoys vague platitudes about the "politics of hope" (his words) and "a place of stable jobs, amiable foreign relations (that is) not paralyzed by baby boomer culture wars" (Primeau's words).

Primeau mentions Andrew Sullivan's piece in the Atlantic, (Goodbye to All That, December 2007)), which, I would argue, was an assault to serious journalism and smart political engagement. In fact, Sullivan even admits that the logic behind an Obama candidacy “has little to do with his policy proposals.”

He writes:

“Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us.”

This is just silly, Chris Matthews-esque politico hero worship. This worldview asserts that charisma and so-called “intangible” leadership qualities are more important that how one would run the country. And sadly it is dominant in the media’s coverage of US national politics. And we wonder why most American voters don’t really care about issues (AP IPSOS 3.11.2007). And this is without getting into the fact that Obama really has no proposals that appeal to the left either. His health care proposal is a continuing of the status quo; and he, like Hillary Clinton, is totally Rubinized with virtually no new economic ideas.

The one thing that Obama offers both the left and the right is that he is not Hillary Clinton, whose pathetic triangulations, war mongering and submissiveness to corporations irritate lefties like me, while the fact that she is a Clinton irritates conservatives like Sullivan. Hell, even Sean Hannity types occasionally speak glowingly of Obama.

And this is what I think is at the root of Obama “cross-party appeal.” Indeed, not being Hillary is a good thing. But it doesn’t make him a good presidential candidate – and certainly not a “transformational” one.

Local Papers, National Issues

There is an interesting item up at Romanesko right now. The editorial page editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune is leaving because her and the publisher disagree on the role of the editorial page. In a letter to the staff, publisher Chris Harte writes:

We have a professional disagreement about the role of the editorial pages and how they should be edited. The main shift I want to see is toward even more locally focused editorial pages.

I believe the role of a metro newspaper is changing radically and rapidly in a world of instant global access to information. I see the need for our editorial pages, like the rest of the newspaper, to concentrate more heavily than ever on local, state and regional issues. This is where we can stake a claim like no other media can.

Our readers can go to many places to get informed opinion on the Iraq war or global warming. But there are very few places they can go for expert opinion on local issues. And that is where I want us to dwell, with the active participation of our readers.

Harte's view here is a common one. Local papers want to cover local news, and indeed that makes perfect sense. But I do think there is a serious argument that rarely gets enough attention, for having local papers comment on national and international issues.

If all local papers leave larger issues alone, then the opinion commentary from newspapers comes from few too places: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal etc ...

And this is a problem. National issues have local implication. Global warming and the War in Iraq effect people everywhere. And it is not healthy for a country to have just the papers in New York and Washington opine on whether or not a country should go to war.

For an obvious example of this, we can go back and look to see how newspaper editorial pages around the country reacted to Powell's speech in Feb. 2003. You will notice that the editorials from most of the major papers had similar sentiments. To find opinions that countered this, you needed to look elsewhere.

The Washington Post editorial board called Powell's speech "irrefutable." The New York Times wrote: "Mr. Powell's most convincing evidence was of efforts by Iraq to shield chemical or biological weapons programs from United Nations inspectors " and that it was "all the more convincing because he dispensed with apocalyptic invocations of a struggle of good and evil and focused on shaping a sober, factual case against Mr. Hussein's regime." USA Today called it “new and forceful evidence” of Iraq’s weapons programs and terrorism links. The LA Times bought the claims as well, and the editorial page editor later said "I do wish we'd been more skeptical of Powell's WMD claims before the UN." The Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune were, likewise, utterly convinced in the merits of Powell's speech.

“If and when the administration gets editorial support from the elite media, it’s just about a done deal, because the public will fall in line,” said David Domke a professor of communication at the University of Washington in Seattle.

So clearly, given the near monolithic voices that major editorial pages have had on the major issues of our time, there is a real case for encouraging local dailies in smaller cities to step up and say what the big papers will not.

Blackwater USA banned from Iraq

Per the NY Times

Blackwater USA, an American contractor that provides security to some of the top American officials in Iraq, has been banned from working in the country by the Iraqi government after a shooting that left eight Iraqis dead and involved an American diplomatic convoy.

For those unfamiliar with Blackwater, I would suggest reading some of Jeremy Scahill and Garret Ordower's invaluable work on the issue. It is not at all surprising to see that they involved in a controversy like this. Blackwater, like all of the private contractors hired by the US, work in obscurity, and there is no practical means to account for their actions. It will be interesting to see how the US responds to this. My hunch is that they will keep quiet. The extent of private contractors working in Iraq, is not widely known to the public and I am sure the US Pentagon prefers it that way. Private contractors make up almost half of the US forces in Iraq, but we do not know how many have been killed, and are not counted as part of the 160,000 troops. Nor are they discussed in the debates over timelines for withdrawal in Washington.

But as the Times notes, Blackwater only accounts for a small portion -- 1-2 percent -- of private contractors in Iraq, so even if they are unable to work in Iraq, it will not really change the US use of private military contractors. Unless, of course, it sparks a genuine debate over the privatization of the military.

Iraq could try and prosecute the Blackwater soldiers for murder. Would the US challenge that by arguing that because they are hired by the US, they are granted immunity, much like the regular US troops?

The al-Maliki Government

The Iraqi papers paint a rather dismal picture of the Iraqi government, and the future of Iraq.

From al-Azzaman:

This government’s performance has alienated many Iraqis and forced nearly half of its members to boycott it. And despite its devastating performance, Maliki goes about his work as if he is leading a representative government with an impressive record.

The government Maliki leads fails the simplest test necessary to measure the success of any government in the world. It is weaker than the militia force of any of the political factions in the country. Its authority hardly goes beyond the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad. It cannot provide proper public services. It has drastically failed to reinstate security.

Maliki’s government is practically non-existent and if we were in a country with a sound political system, it should have resigned long time ago. The fact that Maliki limgers on is an added signal of the damage he is determined to inflict on the country’s political process.

Another columnist notes:

And the present-day Iraq is suffering from its own dictatorship covered with the skin of democracy. Iraq is a failed country. It is imploded. It is under a constant state of destruction and annihilation. It is isolated. In short, Iraq is a country which suffers from the nice words its invaders once bragged about such as democracy, liberation and freedom. These have turned into nails in Iraq’s coffin.

Maher makes a mistake

Bill Maher is back on the air, and has just stated that the Iraqis want us to stay in Iraq. I guess he didn't bother to look at the polling. "Most Iraqis Favor Immediate Pullout."

Sadly, none of the panelists, even those that disagreed with this statement, actually pointed this out.

A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.

IraqSlogger to charge for content

This is unfortunate news. IraqSlogger, perhaps the best place to get information on Iraq, will soon be behind a $60 a month pay wall.

I check this site everyday, but I have been priced out. It is a shame.

UPDATE: I keep thinking about this and I have to wonder: who can afford $60 a month? The obvious answer: scholars, diplomats and journalists who specialize in Iraq or foreign affairs who receive operational funding from colleges or journalistic institutions. But certainly few common folks, or for that matter young journalists with no expense accounts (like me), can pony up $60 dollars a month. And while IraqSlogger says the money will pay for staff, and tipsters in Iraq, their staff is still tiny compared to many other journalistic outfits, and one can access the Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and so forth for free.

Moreover, IraqSlogger's most valuable feature is their daily overview of Iraqi papers. It is a great summary, but most of these papers have English language editions available for free online, and even those that don't can still be translated via Google.

Now, IraqSlogger is great for people that are interested in the specifics of the Iraq situation and they give more specifics than the Times and other outlets. But I would suggest bookmarking the Iraqi papers they reference: al- Arabiya, al-Hayet, and al-Quds al-Arabi (translated by Google), and also add Dahr Jamail's web site which is full of on-location hard news reports from Iraq and you will be able to get specifics on Iraq that go way deeper than the US press allows. Save the $60 dollars. Bloggers like Juan Cole also offer important links and updates regarding Iraq, that are likewise helpful.

IraqSlogger is a great one-stop location, but if this switch forces its readers to dig a little deeper into the Eastern press, it can only be a good thing. In the meantime, you may want to dig though the Slogger archives and consume what you can while it is still free.

Update II: IraqSlogger has evidently heard some unhappy rumblings and says the following in a new FAQ:

I cannot afford a subscription, but I love IraqSlogger and don't want to lose access to it. Please, can I have a free subscription?

Yes, in exceptional cases, we will provide a free subscription. Stay tuned for an announcement with details tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see what they have cooking. My guess, free subscriptions to the families of troops, and discounted ones for students. We'll see.

The Iowa Debate

First a few quick notes on The Iowa Debate was on this morning. You have to admit John Edwards puts the other Democratic candidates in a tough position when he forces Dodd, Clinton et al to admit that they will take money from lobbyists.

But Richardson is the winner so far today. His campaign is flailing, but he is doing something right when he notes that residual forces in Iraq is a bad idea. I was glad that the moderator, George Stephanopoulos, pressed the other candidates on the issue. (Gravel: "This is American imperialism here.") I was very dissapointed in Edward's "Any Democratic president will end this war" response. That is simply untrue. Most of them will leave residual forces and have no plans for private military contractors, which now make up almost half of the troops. But Richardson made Clinton, Edwards, Obama all look hawkish -- and in doing so appeals himself to the base. Moreover, he forced a rare substantive discussion.

Unfortunately, the rest of the debate was fairly unhelpful. The religion question irritates me. Watching eight of them try to out pray each other seems out of place. Gravel's response was somewhat humanistic, which appealed to me.

I was also pleased to see Dodd mention media concentration. This ought to be a huge campaign issue and I wish Clinton would get pressed more on it. She is cozy with Rupert Murdoch and the Clinton Administration passed the awful Telecommunication Act of 1996 which has led the way for unprecedented concentration of media ownership.

On Pollack and O'Hanlon

William Kristol was on the Daily Show last night and, unsurprisingly, he referenced Pollack and O'Hanlon's op-ed about how great things are going in Iraq. Here, Glenn Greenwald explains how absurd and misleading the Pollack and O'Hanlon spectacle is.

But the far greater deceit involves the trip itself and the way it was represented -- both by Pollack/O'Hanlon as well as the excited media figures who touted its significance and meaning. From beginning to end, this trip was planned, shaped and controlled by the U.S. military -- a fact inexcusably concealed in both the Op-Ed itself and virtually every interview the two of them gave. With very few exceptions, what they saw was choreographed by the U.S. military and carefully selected for them.

Iraq, damn lies, and fiction

Close followers of the War in Iraq have known for some time now that Sunni insurgent groups have turned on al Qaeda. Indeed, the vast majority of the Iraqi resistance, including Sunnis, oppose both the United States occupation, and al Qaeda in Iraq, as do the majority of Iraqis, Iraqi lawmakers, Americans, US troops, and, for that matter, most of the entire world.

Some such as William Kristol -- who recently wrote what must qualify as the most delusional op-ed of the year -- argue that this is a sign of how things in Iraq are turning around. Victory is finally in our grasp, he argues, in a piece which projects that Bush will be viewed favorably by history. (It is worth noting, of course, that Kristol's reputation is forever hinged to Bush and his war, so it is no surprise to see a Hail Mary attempt at vindication come from him).

This is just nonsense, and today's Guardian reminds us why. They report that 7 of the major Sunni groups have committed to constant attacks against US forces until a total withdrawal is complete -- an unsurprising reality, but one that nonetheless exposes the absurd meanderings of the war apologists for what they are.

Seven of the most important Sunni-led insurgent organisations fighting the US occupation in Iraq have agreed to form a public political alliance with the aim of preparing for negotiations in advance of an American withdrawal, their leaders have told the Guardian.

In their first interview with the western media since the US-British invasion of 2003, leaders of three of the insurgent groups - responsible for thousands of attacks against US and Iraqi armed forces and police - said they would continue their armed resistance until all foreign troops were withdrawn from Iraq, and denounced al-Qaida for sectarian killings and suicide bombings against civilians.

******************

Speaking of Iraq, could the US and the media who report their leaks, stop insulting the intelligence of the rest of the world by claiming that Iran is funding al-Qaeda? This has got to the least believable lie that the White House has told in years, which is no small feat. Think about this for two seconds: Iran is the neighbor of a country, once ruled by Sunni government with no love for the Shiites in Iran, that is now a massive power vacuum that Iran is well poised to fill. With Iraq now dominated by Shiites and with the pro-Iranian al-Sadr becoming the most powerful person in the country, why would Iran want to fund an organization that literally kills Shiites routinely? And this goes much deeper than religious strife, it is an issue of geopolitical power. Why would Iran fund a group that would serve a geopolitical rival?

As I was telling my friend Steve, in baseball terms this is akin to the Red Sox giving the Yankees Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz for nothing and agreeing to pay their salaries. It is completely absurd.

Things I did not know about Christopher Hitchens Part II

The New Statesman digs up a part of Christopher Hitchens past that is downright shocking. You have got to read this one to believe it.

Hitchens, now an American citizen, remains one of the fiercest and most unrepentant enthusiasts for the US-British overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But, back in 1976, when working for the New Statesman, he took a more admiring view of the Iraqi dictator, as this article shows. Young Hitchens saw Saddam as an up-and-coming secular socialist who would transform Iraq into a progressive model for the rest of the Middle East.

Cities and States for Peace.

A new Sweet Victory is up on local resolutions against the War.

How to end the War

Nicholas Von Hoffman writes an essay in defense of the "fringe candidates" regarding the presidential debates and in doing so rightly pokes a big hole in the Democrats excuses of giving Bush $100 billion for the war.

The mainstreamers were rattling on to the effect that, of course, they are against the war; they just do not have enough votes to pass a law ending it.Then Kucinich was given the microphone for a moment and said that Congress can stop the war whenever it wants, not by passing a law the President will veto but by not passing any war appropriations bill at all. Just do nothing and Mr. Bush will have no money for the war and the troops come home.

This may sound obvious, but the major candidates and most of the media, almost always let the Democrats "we-don't-have-the-votes" excuse go unchallenged.

There is historical precedent for this type of media charade. By in large, the media has a done better job of distorting the truth during and leading up to war, than telling it. Media critic Norman Solomon's book chronicling such behavior, War Made Easy, has recently been adapted into a film, and is worth checking out. He makes the point that by the time the bulk of the media does turn on a war it is almost always years after the public does,--and even when they do, they still perpetuate the empty platitudes and deceitful logic that keeps us in combat.

Olberman blasts Dems over War Funding

I was worried that with the Democrats grabbing control of Congress, Keith Olberman may become a bit too easy on Democrats. His January interview with Hillary Clinton did little to change that.

But a recent "Special Comment" -- easily his most powerful one yet -- is a pretty harsh condemnation of the Democratic leadership, and rightly so.

The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans; The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

[...]

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.

What "the enemy" wants

The other day Pat suggested to me that Lieberman was right to say that if the US were to leave Iraq it would satisfy "the enemy." (For clarification purposes, though Pat originally supported the war and the occupation that has followed, he now wants the US to withdraw its troops.)

Nothing infuriates the left more than when those in favor of the war suggest that to leave would bolster the enemy. But it's nearly impossible to argue that this isn't the case. Of course our defeat plays into the hands of our enemy, that's what defeat in war means.

I took issue with this assessment arguing that al Qaeda (who is often cited as America's main enemy in Iraq) benefits from the US presence.

It is certainly not impossible to argue that leaving would not bolster "the enemy." (Of course, you fail to say who the enemy is, and no, its not obvious. Is it Iran, al Qaeda, who? The distinction matters, different groups will have different reactions to a US withdrawal)

In fact, it is almost impossible to argue that our continued presence isn't bolstering the enemy ... if the enemy is, al Qaeda, leaving Iraq could hurt them considerably. The US occupation of Iraq has empowered al Qaeda to new levels.

In the latest edition of Foreign Affairs (the publication for the Council for Foreign Relations -- hardly a a group of left-wing pacifists) Bruce Riedel makes a similar argument.

(Bin Laden) seeks to, as he puts it, "provoke and bait" the United States into "bleeding wars" throughout the Islamic world; he wants to bankrupt the country much as he helped bankrupt, he claims, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The demoralized "far enemy" would then go home, allowing al Qaeda to focus on destroying its "near enemies," Israel and the "corrupt" regimes of Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. occupation of Iraq helped move his plan along, and bin Laden has worked hard to turn it into a trap for Washington. Now he may be scheming to extend his strategy by exploiting or even triggering a war between the United States and Iran.....

"[I]t is time to recognize that engagement there is more of a trap than an opportunity for the United States. Al Qaeda and Iran both want Washington to remain bogged down in the quagmire. Al Qaeda has openly welcomed the chance to fight the United States in Iraq....

"Rather than reinforce its failures, the United States should disengage from the civil war in Iraq, with a complete, orderly, and phased troop withdrawal that allows the Iraqi government to take the credit for the pullout and so enhance its legitimacy.

I am not sure I agree with him that Iran wants the States to stay there for much longer. I think Iran feels adequately empowered by the US failures at this stage. They know the coming realignment of the region will benefit them, but I think at this point they view the US as a destabilizing force in the region who will only contribute to further problems along their border if they remain in Iraq.

Nonetheless, I think he is right to say that al-Qaeda would prefer the US to stay in Iraq. The US presence "emboldens" them more than a withdrawal would.