The Squad takes on mon petit chou Sarkozy and what his election might mean for France, the US, and the world. Join Siggy, Dr. Sanity, Shrink, and me as we opine on matters small and great.
Oh, and it’s okay now to have some French cheese and drink some French wine as you listen. But just a little of the latter—you’ll want to keep your mind clear enough to appreciate the fabulous wit and wisdom of the Squad. Or something like that.
I have to admit I’ve got a ton of sympathy for Presidential candidates. The campaign seems at times to be a two-year marathon of travel, speeches, handshaking, exhaustion, and exposure to the howling wolves of the press who are always waiting for the first little slip to pounce and devour their prey, even one so favored as Obama.
Yes, you might say the candidates all asked for it; nobody is forced to run for President. And at this point, no one can plead ignorance of the process. But still, the actual experience—like having a baby and needing to get up five times a night to feed it—is probably far more grueling in the actual doing than it appears in the prospective contemplation thereof.
So when Obama made his slip-up and overstated by a factor of 1000X how many died in the Kansas tornado, I’m inclined to say it’s amazing such errors don’t happen more often to all the candidates, given the circumstances. But his excuse—that he was tired and weary—doesn’t sit all that well with me, although I have no doubt that it’s both true and understandable.
The problem is twofold. The first is that it may indicate not only a certain lack of toughness on Obama’s part, but a willingness to offer up excuses too easily. It’s okay for a Presidential candidate (or President) to be tired, but I’m not so sure he should be so eager to excuse himself on that score. I’ve often thought that, if the campaign is a grueling marathon, it’s probably a (pardon the phrase) cakewalk compared to the actual Presidency.
Just as the Presidency is not for the shy or those tortured by ambivalence, just as it requires a certain amount of narcissism (perhaps more than is healthy in ordinary life), it also requires true grit and enormous—almost superhuman—endurance. And if the President doesn’t feel up to it all the time, he/she is supposed to shut up about it and not let others see.
No excuses, although of course Presidents make mistakes. But, as Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here” for the President—and for the Presidential candidates.
In a larger sense—and perhaps I’m overdoing the analogy here, but what the hey—Obama’s willingness to admit to exhaustion mirrors the Democrats’ willingness to admit to being so weary of Iraq that they want it to be over, and immediately. Arguments about the pros and cons of the war aside, in strategic terms the clamor for the pullout signals a lack of stamina that can only be immensely heartening to our enemies.
Al Qaeda is a secret organization. It doesn’t publish statistics on how many members it has, and if it did we wouldn’t believe them anyway, because for al Qaeda propaganda trumps veracity every time.
And yet lack of specific knowledge doesn’t stop commentators from tossing out pronouncements, not only about al Qaeda’s size and its recent growth or lack thereof, but also about the reasons behind said expansion.
From the NY Times, here (from the serendipitously named Clark Kent Ervin) is a good example of the sort of thing one reads almost on a daily basis:
While many of [al Qaeda’s] operatives have been killed or captured since 9/11, the supply of young people who are willing and even eager to attack Americans seems limitless. Our disastrous misadventure in Iraq has only increased that desire. Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself in Pakistan and is trying to reclaim Afghanistan.
I recall first hearing the “al Qaeda and the Taliban are back in control in Afghanistan” meme a few weeks after the Afghan War ended. And, although I have no reason to doubt that they continue to be a force to be reckoned with there, and are continually trying to regroup (with some success) there’s been nothing to indicate a major leap in that direction. If you read the previous link you’ll see the general vagueness of all such reports, which tend to go like this: we took out a lot of their leadership, but they’re trying to come back, and the extent to which they have been successful is unknown. Well, of course.
It does seem fairly clear that, like the broomsticks in Disney’s “Fantasia,” al Qaeda has become less centralized over time. Again, it’s hard to see how it could be otherwise; it just makes good sense. Even the absence of a major attack on the US since 9/11 isn’t definitive evidence of anything much; your guess is as good as anyone’s as to whether it’s from lack of opportunity, or a cagey strategy to allow us to destroy ourselves with argument and divisiveness—after all, an attack might actually unite us, even now, even with the dread Bushitler in charge.
Ervin makes the bold assertion that our “disastrous misadventure” in Iraq (well, I guess we know where he stands on that one) has increased the desire of willing young people in the Muslim world to attack Americans. I guess he’s a regular jihadi mindreader, because his statements occurs in the absence of evidence of actual increased attacks.
Maybe he’s right. But perhaps not. The truth is that no matter what we’ve done, the desire of jihadis to attack Americans seems to have been steadily increasing. If Iraq was the cause of an increased increased desire, what was the cause back in the 90’s? Oh, of course, the Gulf War. Or our presence in Saudi Arabia. Or our support of Israel. Or, or, or….as some say, our way of life itself, and the increased exposure of fundamentalist Muslims to that way of life.
The Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, one of al Qaeda’s early inspirations, was scandalized and angered back in the Forties by such American outrages as green lawns and church socials (take a look; I’m not making this stuff up). Jihadis take offense at an awful lot, and we don’t call it a “clash of civilizations” for nothing.
In fact, a good case could be made that the Iraq War has caused a decline in al Qaeda sympathy, at least in Iraq itself, where most of the victims of al Qaeda seem to have been innocent Iraqis. But the truth is, no one knows, and yet that doesn’t stop many people from acting as though they do.
It’s not as though we have a graph to chart the growth of al Qaeda, and can compare the slope of the line before-Iraq and after-Iraq. The 90’s, with training camps in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, were clearly the growth years. Many of those leaders are now dead, pursued by the US and some of its allies. But, as President Bush said in a speech he gave as long ago and far away as September 20, 2001:
Americans should not expect one battle [against al Qaeda], but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success.
Sometimes I wonder how many were listening, or how many remember, or how many even care.
Watching a tape of Sarkozy walking through a crowd, I noticed that he is not a tall man.
This got me thinking as to whether Sarkozy is following a trend I analyzed about two months ago: the rise of the height-challenged (otherwise known as short) candidate. Research shows that past US Presidents have tended on the whole to be taller than average, although the legend that the taller man always wins is just that—a legend. Whether it’s the same in France I don’t know, but my guess is: maybe.
Sarkozy has been compared at times to Reagan, but in the height arena he’s positively Napoleonic and somewhat less than Giulianic. The only mention I could find of an exact figure for how tall Sarkozy is states that he comes in at just around 5 feet 5 inches, which certainly would preclude any references to de Gaulle, a lofty 6’5″.
I couldn’t be happier about this news.
I first wrote about Sarkozy here, during the riots in France. He seemed a fascinating character then, and even more so now, a breath of fresh air in a France that has been stagnating for quite some time. Sarkozy represents the desire for change; as Publius Pundit sees it:
There’s no doubt Sarko wants change. But he wants it for different reasons than leftists often do. Leftists want to create a New Man. Sarko wants to save France so that it can be France, not turn it into another cookie-cutter Berkeley or Ann Arbor, as has been happening. Sarko’s a flag-waver. He’s extremely passionate and energetic, and he will make a difference. His proposed economic programs to keep France powerful and competitive, will do just that, as French voters read it, because that’s a big issue that resonated.
This promises to be very interesting. Perhaps France will become an ally once again, and not just in name only.
[ADDENDUM: I didn’t realize Sarkozy was anti-boomer. Well, that’s okay; I forgive him, even though I’m a boomer myself. And, what’s more, I agree with him—the legacy of the 60s in France (and to some extent in this country) has been a destructive moral relativism that cries out to be corrected.]
Recently I saw an ad on TV for a product designed to fix a problem I previously hadn’t known existed: saggy earlobes.
At first I thought it must be a joke of some sort. Saggy earlobes? Of all the available body parts about which we’ve grown so self-conscious and dissatisfied, I wouldn’t have thought that earlobes would be high on anybody’s list.
But apparently a significant number of people will barely leave the house because of their worn-out earlobes—or their perception of their worn-out earlobes. So this product is the non-surgical equivalent of breast implants for the earlobe, uplifting the fallen.
Take a look, if you dare.
We’re never satisfied, it seems. In some cultures, people want nothing more than to do the opposite, all for beauty’s sake: to streeeeetch their earlobes with wider and bigger plugs so that they become—not just saggy, but stupendously, freakishly saggy.
To wit:
And lest you think such spectacular distortions of body parts are the predilection only of tribal folk, think again. Recently I couldn’t help but notice (although I tried valiantly to keep from staring) an ethnically unremarkable young man sporting similar auricular splendor behind the counter of our local health food store.
I’ve long owned a fascinating book entitled The Unfashionable Human Body. It describes the lengths to which people have gone throughout history to overcome their essential boredom with the unadorned human form. Clothes are part of this effort, although of course they have many practical considerations as well. Jewelry likewise, minus the practical. But, especially in areas where clothing as we know it is more or less optional, the body itself became the plastic clay to be molded by humankind’s driving need to not leave well enough alone.
The variety has been astounding. For example, the book has a lengthy chapter, with illustrations, on foot-binding, one of the saddest chapters in the annals of what people are willing to do for beauty and an enhanced ability to attract the opposite sex. In this endeavor, as in present-day female genital mutilation, the practice involved not just the preferences of the opposite sex, but the cooperation of older woman themselves in foisting it on young girls to perpetuate the custom and increase the girls’ desirability.
So-called “civilized” people are hardly immune to such machinations. The whalebone corset was responsible for a great deal of the female fainting that went on not all that long ago in Western life. And I’m old enough to remember a time when even young teenagers were expected to wear girdles (and, believe me, those things were uncomfortable) any time they wore a garment that was in the least form-fitting, lest they be betrayed by a tell-tale jiggle.
My own grandmother came from an era in which the assumption was that, without such support, the body would slide, jelly-like, into a state of amorphous shapelessness; even the feet and ankles needed high-sided shoes to shore up their innate tendency to “spread” and weaken.
And then there’s that perennial favorite, high heels. No ankle support there. These are a little unusual, to be sure—but only a little:
Our driving force to transform ourselves into objects of beauty—even if one culture’s transformation is another’s deformation—is most decidedly here to stay.
And don’t get me started on tattoos.
It’s too busy a day today for me to post much, but I just wanted to comment on the debate last night—the one I didn’t watch.
Others did, and from the variety of their responses I’m reminded that beauty—and Presidential debate winners—is very much in the eye of the beholder.
These early “debates” are little more than introductions, anyway. Who looks tired? Whose forehead is too shiny? Who seems most “Presidential,” that hard-to-define-but-we-know-it-when-we-see-it quality?
I’ve never been keen even on the later Presidential debates. I think they tap into a skill that may or may not have anything to do with being a good President, which is the ability to be glib, seem relaxed, and keep from making a major faux pas (look at your wristwatch, anyone?).
The consensus here seems to have been that Fred Thompson did himself a favor by not showing up. Winner by default?
One arena in which even Bush’s opponents would probably agree he stands out is that he’s the rare public figure who really doesn’t much care what the majority thinks when he sets his agenda; he does what he thinks is right. Of course, that’s either cause for celebration if you tend to agree with him (“resolute,” “integrity,” “courage of his convictions”) or anathema if you don’t (“stubborn,” “arrogant,” “demented,” “evil”).
There’s little doubt that most politicians aren’t nearly so good at ignoring the polls, although our republican (that’s a small “r,” not a typo) form of government dictates that a legislator vote his/her conscience rather than what’s popular.
Clinton, for example, was famous for setting his policy by the latest polls. And there’s no doubt whatsoever that the present Democratic push for a withdrawal from Iraq and a cutoff of funds for the campaign there is to a large extent poll-driven, although there are certainly ideological underpinnings. Here, for example, are some telling quotes:
“This legislation responds to the wishes of the American people to end the war,” Pelosi said, surrounded by American flags, seven TV cameras and dozens of reporters…The ceremony itself was “designed to send a signal to the president that if he decides to veto this bill, he stands alone and at odds with the American people,” said Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley.
The bill received a very theatrical presentation at its sendoff to the President, especially for one that was doomed to be vetoed, has little chance of an override, and therefore was about to die a quick death once it got to its destination. The spectacle was designed to appeal to what the Democrats assume is the disgust of a majority of Americans with the war, and their strong desire to end it quickly.
That’s certainly an understandable conclusion for the Democrats to draw; recent polls have indicated support for a withdrawal within the year. And the Democrats—rightly or wrongly—attribute their victory last November in Congress to their antiwar stance, and are trying to extend it and capitalize on it for 2008.
But beware polls and their vagaries. One of those quirks is that poll results can differ widely based on the way a question is asked. And it turns out that seems to be the case for Iraq and the pullout and the fund cut.
I first was alerted to this fact by a comment from reader “sergey,” calling my attention to National Review’s Cliff May’s report on a series of polls with some results that ought to give the Democrats pause if they feel certain their current strategy is a winner in the political sense.
Americans may have been against the surge when it was proposed, but according to recent polls they are also against Congress’s denying the money for additional troops (61% against, a hefty majority). If that seems contradictory, I can only say that human beings aren’t known for their consistency. In this case a further explanation could be that, although the majority of people wish Bush would give up on the war and the whole thing would just go away, once a course of action such as a surge has been proposed and is in operation, they do not support cutting it off in mid-stream and they especially don’t like what they see as Congress’s overreaching to tell the military what it should do.
This is borne out by the response to another poll question May reports: 69% of American voters (an even heftier majority) trust military commanders more than members of Congress (18%) to decide when United States troops should leave Iraq. Americans may not think much of Bush right now, but they think even less of Congress’s ability to set a military agenda.
President Bush, that non-poll watcher, may have read a few in preparation for a remark of his made as he vetoed the bill (only the second time in his Presidency that he’s exercised the veto power, by the way): it “substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders.” Pelosi countered with, “We had hoped that the president would have treated it with the respect that bipartisan legislation supported overwhelmingly by the American people deserved.”
I don’t think she’s done all her homework.
The Sanity Squad mouths off again. This time it’s about Tenet and the new loose-lipped trend for former intelligence agents, Israel and the investigation into last summer’s war with Lebanon, Bill Maher’s notion of humor, and a miracle pill. Join me, Siggy, Dr. Sanity, and Shrink for the usual dose of supposed sagacity and sanity.
I’ve long been puzzled by the need of the antiwar and/or anti-Bush factions to give Saddam the benefit of enormous doubt in the buildup to the Iraq War, and to give Bush and his administration none.
It’s not so much that these people were supporters of Saddam; they were not. It’s just that they acted (and still act) as though they were his advocates in a conventional court of law, holding those who removed him to a standard of proof that can only be described as being “beyond a reasonable doubt”—and, perhaps, in some instances, even beyond an unreasonable one.
Our legal system was designed with a strong presumption of innocence, because we feel that the best protection for society is to guarantee the rights of the individual against overreaching by the state. Therefore the standard of proof for guilt for the average person in a trial is extraordinarily high: our society has decided to err on the side of sometimes letting the guilty person go free in order to protect the rights of the innocent. This is laudable, and most of the time it works, and part of the reason it works is that we live in a relatively lawful and civil country.
Does a similar rule apply to war? How high should the standard of proof be? Is someone like Saddam innocent until proven guilty—accent on the word “proven?” And how can one prove anything about a society as closed as Saddam’s Iraq was? There are risks to erring on the side of caution (the enemy attacks our shores) and risks to erring on the side of pre-emption (an unnecessary war against that enemy), and all judgments must be made with incomplete and sketchy information. That is the dilemma, and anyone who suggests it’s an easy one to solve is being disingenuous.
After all, the intelligence community doesn’t have the rules of courtroom discovery on its side—no subpoenas, no interrogatories, no ability to compel the release of evidence. Au contraire; one has to infiltrate, go by rumor and innuendo, and draw conclusions from the uncertain and fragmented evidence available.
The UN arms inspections, based on the idea that the UN possessed something like the power of a court to compel evidence, were useless without some sort of enforcement. and the actions of the Bush Administration in the UN during the buildup to the war were in part designed to give teeth to the UN’s ability to overcome Saddam’s defiance of the rules of international law. Unfortunately, the UN did not fully cooperate in its own behalf to enforce that law.
War is a serious thing, and should not be undertaken lightly. But not stopping a looming threat by a sworn enemy is another serious thing. Because we ultimately made the decision to go to war in Iraq, we know the consequences (so far) of that action. We can only guess at what the consequences would have been have been had we not gone to war there.
As Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review:
If we had left Saddam in place, the sanctions would have disintegrated in short order ”” Security Council members France, Russia and China were bought and paid for in Oil-for-Food bribes. Once the sanctions had collapsed, Saddam would have been right back in business ”” his WMD programs ready to be up and running again (to the extent they were not running already) as he sat there with about $20 billion in Oil-for-Food profits and an ongoing relationship with al Qaeda (among many other jihadist groups).
If you want to say we shouldn’t have gone to Iraq, and should have anticipated the present chaos there, fair enough. But at least have the honesty to say you’d prefer the alternative: A Saddam Hussein, emboldened from having faced down the United States and its sanctions, loaded with money, arming with WMDs, and coddling jihadists.
I don’t imagine we’ll hear that sort of honesty from those who were and are against the war. What we tend to hear, instead, are legalistic arguments about how it couldn’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt whether Saddam (take your pick) had WMDs, could have built them after sanctions were removed, wanted to build them, might have used them if built, was allied with al Qaeda, was sympathetic to al Qaeda, was looking for uranium in Niger, and so on and so forth.
George Tenet’s new book and recent interviews are replete with language about whether or not something or other was proven or absolutely known. But I’ve not read a quote that deals with what standard of proof of dangerousness should be necessary to make real-world decisions about whether a government constituting a threat (especially a nuclear one) should be taken out.
Tenet’s book states, for example, that there was plenty of “worrisome” evidence of connection and cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda. But in his interview with “60 Minutes,” Tenet says the CIA couldn’t “verify” the connection. Similarly for evidence of Saddam’s Niger yellowcake efforts; as McCarthy says, it’s never been proven false and if most likely to be true, a situation he likens to “probable cause” for indictment.
We know, of course, that Saddam had defied countless UN resolutions and was playing a cat and mouse game with inspectors—making even more of a mockery of the UN than it had already made of itself—and this constituted a violation of the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire. We know Saddam was a murderous and sadistic tyrant whose police state reign of terror over the people of Iraq was due to be perpetuated even after his death by his sons and heir apparents. We know, we know….we know enough to say this war was multidetermined, according to the best information we had at the time, and even according to the information we know now. That it has not gone smoothly ever since is another fact we know, and one we should have predicted from the outset and for which we should have been prepared.
Some of the squabbling about standards of proof necessary to justify the war is just political jockeying. But some of it represents a real difference of opinion between those who supported the war and those who did not. The long drawn out bickering over the word “imminent,” and how and when President Bush used it, is part of this difference. Some believe a threat must not only be “imminent” but must be realized—that is, for example, that no strikes should be pre-emptive and that an American city would need to be nuked to justify a retaliatory attack. Some believe “imminence” (a poorly-defined word—“imminence” is in the eye of the beholder) must be present. Some, such as President Bush, believe that in this world of potentially nuclear-armed terrorists and rogue states we can no longer wait for such “imminence.”
Bush’s use of the word imminent” in his 2003 State of the Union message bore out that idea:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
Here’s a cogent tracing of how Bush’s words came to be misquoted. But even if they had not been distorted, it’s fairly clear that many have a fundamental disagreement with what Bush was proposing about when it is necessary to act.
One of the many goals of the Iraq War was to serve notice to those who would play threatening Saddam-like games with the international community and/or the US that there would hereafter be a risk to such machinations; such threats would be taken seriously. The idea was that the Iraq war would have the side benefit of having a deterrent effect on others with agendas similar to Saddam’s. This worked for a while; for example, it seems to have been part of Gaddafi’s motivation to get with the program. But subsequent events in this country, including what’s happening in Congress right now and the irresolute message it sends, have utterly removed that effect.
The notion of needing to act to deter threats before they become imminent is not a new one. As President Kennedy said during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis:
We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril.
Kennedy was dealing with a state, the USSR, that already had in its possession a great deal of harmful weaponry. but it also had a track record of relative rationality and restraint vis a vis the US. The USSR knew the risks it faced in defying us, and it believed that Kennedy wouldn’t hesitate to use the awesome weaponry at his command.
And so we avoided a war during the Missile Crisis. The difference now is that Saddam had given no indication of restraint, nor do the terrorists of al Qaeda and other jihadi networks. On the contrary, there was and still is every reason to believe that if they obtain nuclear weapons they will use them with little fear of retaliation and little hesitance.
Who among us would have been happy waiting for that to happen? Who among us is still happy waiting for that to happen? That was the reasoning behind using a standard of proof for the Iraqi war that had more resemblance to “probable cause” than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It’s a reasoning I understand and still support—not because it is so wonderful, but because, unfortunately, there is no viable alternative that seems better.
George Tenet has written a tell-all book, another example of the talk show mentality that has pervaded this country in recent years. Correct me if I’m wrong (I know you will!), but I don’t recall that it used to be customary for retired CIA officers, much less heads of the CIA, to write self-serving memoirs.
But Tenet has written a book entitled At the Center of the Storm—interesting choice, that title. I assume he’s referring to himself in his capacity as CIA director, but he also could be referring to the accusations that he messed up, charges that appear to weigh extremely heavily on his mind.
Extremely heavily, indeed. In fact, if you read Tenet’s interview with “60 Minutes,” you’ll find he is exceptionally emotional about the entire subject. Perhaps his emotionality is clouding his judgment, because (as Bill Kristol has written in this Weekly Standard piece, and Roger Simon has elaborated on here) Tenet is either lying or sadly mistaken about some of his facts.
Tenet attributes comments to Richard Perle that Perle not only denies, but it turns out the conversation could not have occurred as Tenet states because Perle wasn’t in Washington at the time. The sloppiness of Tenet’s assertion about Perle (he speaks as though it had been “seared into” his brain, but now he says he must have gotten the date wrong) doesn’t engender a great deal of confidence in his ability to tell a narrative that depends on attention to detail and an excellent memory.
Andrew McCarthy points out many other anomalies in Tenet’s story. I’m sure the blogs will be duking it out as to who’s right and who’s wrong on statements such as whether the CIA was able to “verify” Iraq’s involvement in 9/11 (as well as what the word “verify’ signifies, and why it’s used here), and whether the CIA had actually “knocked down” the Niger uranium claim Bush made in his State of the Union speech.
But I was struck, on reading Tenet’s “60 Minutes” interview with Scott Pelley, by his extreme emotional intensity. The entire thing reads less like the dispassionate relating of a sequence of events and more like a plea to the jury for leniency and the restoration of Tenet’s honor (the latter is a word he uses many times in the interview).
The CBS report on the “60 Minutes” interview leads with a remarkable statement by Tenet that illustrates the sort of thing I’m talking about: “People don’t understand us, you know,” complains Tenet (the “us” here being Tenet and his fellow employees at the CIA).
Tenet vents on:
…they think we’re a bunch of faceless bureaucrats with no feelings, no families, no sense of what it’s like to be passionate about running these bastards down. There was nobody else in this government that felt what we felt before or after 9/11…This was personal.
Yes indeed, very very personal. Tenet is understandably and extraordinarily sensitive to charges that he fell asleep at the switch—because, in fact, he was the one at the switch, from 1997 on. It would be too much to ask, perhaps, that he remain objective; too much of his personal reputation is at stake. But once people give themselves over to this sort of heated emotionality, it becomes likely that their intense human need to vindicate themselves can easily make them, if not lie, then misperceive and misremember events in order to throw the softest and kindest possible light on their own actions.
Here’s some more of the extraordinary feeling emphasis from Tenet:
All these commissions, and all these reports never got underneath the feeling of my people. You know, to see us written about as if we’re idiots. Or if we didn’t understand this threat. As if we didn’t understand what happened on that day. To impugn our integrity, our operational savvy.
And the following is the most telling exchange of all, perhaps:
“Somebody who was in the Oval Office that day decided to throw you off the train. Was it the president?” Pelley asks.
“I don’t know,” Tenet says.
“Was it the vice president?” Pelley asks.
“I don’t know,” Tenet says.
“Who was out to get you, George?” Pelley asks.
“Scott, you know, I’m Greek, and we’re conspiratorial by nature. But, you know, who knows?” Tenet says. “I haven’t let myself go there, but as a human being it didn’t feel very good.”
I’m all for feelings, and talking about them. But there’s a place and time. This sort of thing rightly belongs in a therapist’s office. But sometimes it seems as though the whole world has turned into a therapist’s office.
As the Democrats declare the Iraq war moribund and failed, others are not so sure. General Petraeus (oh well, what does he know?) reports that Sunnis are turning away from support for al Qaeda, and that the number of killings is significantly down since the surge began.
The perception in the MSM is different, and it’s no accident. That’s because the terrorists in Iraq are focusing on big bombings, media events that get our attention and cause a perception of ever-increasing carnage. Terrorists are savvy about how our media works, and about how to wear down support for the war still further; they have no reluctance to use the murder of Iraqi civilians to speak to Reid, et al, in the language they understand and respond to.
But statistics indicate the terrorists’ overall killing capacity is down, at least for the moment. Quite a few leaders have been captured recently, as well, although the operation is fueled by resupplies from Syria and Iran, the engine that drives the whole thing.
I was listening to an interview with Foud Ajami on Fox News, in which he made reference to an item with a fairly low profile on the media radar screen, the resignation from the Maliki cabinet of six al Sadr supporters. Ajami thought it was a good thing, symptomatic of al Sadr’s growing weakness, and good in the practical sense as well because these particular six ministers were overwhelmingly corrupt and useless (in some cases, actually illiterate).
But like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, the same news is seen differently by different analysts and “experts.” Well, they can’t all be right; here are two divergent views on the subject (hint: it’s no surprise Juan Cole finds the development ominous. My guess is that Harry Reid feels the same. The former Iraqi Ambassador Rend al-Rahim, on the other hand, sees it as a weak protest from a Sadr wounded by the surge. And the basic MSM line is a quick assertion that it’s a blow to the Maliki government.)
Ajami, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins and author of a 2006 book on Iraq and the US entitled The Foreigner’s Gift, sees signs of hope in an Iraq that has seen changes in the Sunni perception of the struggle. Sunnis have been accustomed to being rulers there, but their numbers are now reduced (partly by emigration) and they are disillusioned with promised hope from foreign Arabs who never came, or came only to cause more trouble. The Shias, on the other hand, are turning on their erstwhile champion al Sadr and his cabinet ministers (and this was written before their resignation):
There is a growing Shia unease with the Mahdi Army–and with the venality and incompetence of the Sadrists represented in the cabinet–and an increasing faith that the government and its instruments of order are the surer bet. The crackdown on the Mahdi Army that the new American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has launched has the backing of the ruling Shia coalition. Iraqi police and army units have taken to the field against elements of the Mahdi army….To the extent that the Shia now see Iraq as their own country, their tolerance for mayhem and chaos has receded.
That last sentence probably is true of all elements in Iraq, and holds the key to any eventual healing. The surge is having an effect on Iraq that could, over time, lead to a possibility of such healing. But one thing we may not have is the luxury of time.
Ajami made it clear in the interview I watched that the Iraqis are following events in the US government avidly. They understand that President Bush will be in power until January of 2009, and that he will stand firm in the face of a Congress determined to repeat the “helicopters on the roof” scenario of 1975. In the race between the forces of chaos and order in Iraq, both see January 2009 as an exceedingly important date.