Libertarian Arthur Silber’s rant about the review of the Bush Administration’s conduct of the war (from an article in the Democratic Washington Times) took me to Stanley Kurtz’s (his e-mail) lame defense of today’s actions in The National Review. I know it’s bad form to Fisk in 2003, but sometimes life just hands you a hanging curveball and you have to swing away:
The president’s decision to turn to the United Nations for assistance in the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq makes a great deal of sense. It certainly isn’t the ideal approach, but given the divisions within our country, and our general unwillingness to enlarge our military, the president’s decision is reasonable.
I’m sorry, I thought the President was the one who made decisions about the size of the military; it is after all, his Constitutional legal (under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921) duty to propose a budget. I wasn’t aware that it was a consensus activity; no one’s asked me, for example.
[Update: Bush to mount ‘very aggressive’ campaign to explain U.S. mission in Iraq. About freaking time.For one thing, it might actually work out. To the extent that we can make use of United Nations troops, while continuing to exercise control, the move will have been a success. But of course, the French and Germans, and the United Nations as a whole, will do their best to wrest control from the United States.
If you believe in fairies, clap your hands now…(and as in “What’s Up, Tiger Lily,” the hero’s gun will be magically reloaded…)
The real point is that politically, this was the least bad option. As I pointed out a year ago in “Supersize It,” http://nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz080202.asp our too small military put the president in a political trap. The choice was either to break the budget, eliminate domestic spending and lose the claim to a compassionate conservatism, or repeal the tax cut.
Damn right. Can’t let national security get in the way of a tax cut!! Can’t make any demands on the American people, or lead us in any way whatsoever. Let the other generations sacrifice, we’re on Atkins.
All of these are politically unacceptable. So the alternative was to hand off at least some control of Iraq to the U.N.
No, there were a number of other alternatives, among which was carefully weighing the costs before invading and making sure we had the assets in hand to succeed. We could have done a better job isolating the French and Germans before the war. We could have tried to split the Russians off from the French and Germans after we invaded. Those are three reasonable alternatives, and I’m only a voter.
That actually has the political upside of taking an issue away from the Democrats, who had hoped to run on the claim that the Bush administration was dangerously unilateralist.
Who was it who criticized the Democrats for creating defense policy by worrying about how it would play, and not how it would work?
Is this the best foreign policy? No. The best foreign policy requires not the United Nations, but a united nation. Unfortunately, our nation is not united. The occupation of Iraq is not the occupation of Japan or Germany. This is even more because of the fact that we are different than we were back then than the fact that Iraq is not Japan or Germany.
What kills me is that the victim mentality has, according to this, reached the Oval Office. Bush isn’t a leader, and isn’t to be judged by his success as a leader; he’s just the helpless captive of forces beyond his control. Hang on, I’m going to go rewrite Lincoln’s speeches in that light…
A house divided against itself cannot stand. A nation where the political opposition stands against our foreign policy, and even secretly (and not so secretly) hopes for its failure, cannot reform a region as recalcitrant as the Middle East.
Well, Bush had the opportunity to take that political opposition and weld their feet to a set of policies. He chose short-term political advantage instead. Sorry ’bout that.
A nation where…even after an event like 9/11…a draft can be offered as a political tactic against the hawks, is a nation unready to manage social transformation on the other side of the world. Our culture war is real. Now it has taken its toll.
That’s because the hawks did a piss-poor job of selling the reasons for this war to the general public.
In many ways we are strong. Yet disunited we are weak. Our turning to the U.N. is not necessarily a disaster. But it is a sign that our internal divisions have finally exacted a cost.
He gets paid for this? He’s one of the leading neo-con commentators and he can summarize his argument with this pablum? “…is not necessarily a disaster?” “…have finally exacted a cost?” I’m sorry, I thought the destruction of the WTC and damage to the Pentagon was a disaster. I thought that our incoherent foreign policy over twenty years, which tolerated Wahabbism and radical Islamist institutions, and helped create Al Queida exacted a cost. Bush’s weakness at a critical moment is what’s exacting a cost.
MORE UPDATES:
* In a great post extending this and the post below, Porphy busted me on a point of law; the Constitution says nothing about the President submitting a budget. I will stamp my feet and insist he’s wrong about my use of ‘crowing’ however…it may not be OED, but it’s current usage). See also his follow-up post.
They could have asked anything of us on Sept 12, 2001. They said “go shopping”. If they’d taken all the ‘no longer young’ who asked, they’d have had peacekeepers and nationbuilders galore (and I’d be blogging from Afghanistan or Iraq).
How can we trust them, if they won’t trust us?
I think they’re afraid to ask because they largely believe the hype: we’re weak, decadent, spoiled, blah bling blah.
One of the first things I asked after 911 was: what can I do? Being told to go shopping absolutely enraged me. I think there’s a lot of young people with tremendous energy who want to contribute.
When I first saw this topic title, I thought it was about Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
“Mistah Bush– he dead.”
I agree that Bush has done a bad job of selling the war, and I also agree that many Americans were begging for the opportunity to make sacrifices, but the opportunity never came.
However, I do wonder whether the majority of Americans were willing to make sacrifices. The anti-American Vietnam left wasn’t, and they are very powerful and very vocal. They aren’t going away, either. They’ll still faint at the first sight of blood, and since most Americans aren’t terribly knowledable about national security issues, that sort of thing would take its toll no matter what Bush did.
Assume we got support of the UN back in March. There are a great many on the left who would have accused of of “hijacking an international body”, blackmail, extortion, etc. They would have called UN support a “fig leaf”. And blame for any and all failures in Iraq would have fallen squarely on the United States regardless. The idea that the UN will or could have bound up our internal divisions does not withstand thirty seconds of scrutiny.
I’m just still worn out that after the stuff I wrote, in both comments and in a post on my ‘blog, about why I believed being selective about getting help from other countries would be more productive, the Bush administration is going to do this.
I thought I was making sense. I wasn’t saying what I did to “defend” Bush, but because I was convinced it was the right thing to do.
Maybe I just need a vacation or something. I dunno.
You are starting to see a lot of this from conservative commentators looking for excuses for George Bush. Maybe that’s what the supporters of politicians who have difficulty explaining what they are trying to do see as part of their job description. Maybe they take their cues from a White House that may make mistakes but never, ever admits making mistakes — when things go wrong, therefore, it must be someone else’s fault.
But I’m not so concerned about that. What matters is whether or not policy on the Iraqi problem in a direction that promises success. With respect to the UN, I think the administration is moving in the right direction, albeit months later than it should have and without much clarity about what it wants from other UN countries or what it is willing to give up. In fairness, however, the administration is not wrong to ask what exactly the UN wants from the increased authority we would give it in Iraq; it is not wrong to wonder if France and Germany are not using the issue of a new UN mandate as a means of putting off a deployment of their troops that would be unpopular at home; and it is not wrong to wonder if the infusion of lower quality troops from some UN countries wouldn’t make matters worse.
I thought it was worth finding out if our friends at the UN were speaking about Iraq in good faith some time ago, but the possibility does exist that they are not, and are no more serious about collective security than they were last spring.
The only plausible reason for the Bush Administration to seek U.N. involvement at this point is to seek international legitimacy, vis a vis our allies, the domestic audience and the Iraqis themselves. In other words, the motivation can only be political, and not military or budgetary. It can’t possibly be to relieve the burden on our troops or pocketbook, given the numbers involved and the trade-offs to be France, Russia, Germany, etc.
It is a huge mistake. Bush was foolish to get duped into this by Colin Powell, who probably got duped into it (again) by the French.
Our “allies” – the French in particular – will ensure that this initiative fails. They are probably backtracking as we speak (blog?) on assurances given to Powell, who would not have had Bush formalize the approach to the extent he has without basic agreed ground rules.
The French, in particular, will undermine us. They want us to fail. They want to prove their righteousness and will rub it in as much as they can. Chirac’s rhetoric in Paris is all about “restoring sovereignty of Iraq to the Iraqi people as soon as possible” as though that were not U.S. policy as well, which presumably, for the French, is about control of oil and imperial conquest. They will score points off us and seek to embarrass the U.S. administration. The French are not evil, but they are arrogant, opportunistic and deluded. By virtue of their influence and position on the U.N. Security Council, they have become the single greatest obstacle to collective security within the Western World.
I don’t buy the argument that Bush is stalling for time and catering to his foreign and domestic opponents without an intent to follow through. He has more to lose than to gain from the virtually inevitable failure of the initiative. It will make the administration look desperate and short on solutions.
For those reasons alone and even assuming that an internationalization of Iraqi reconstruction through the U.N. were desirable (a highly questionable proposition in itself), this latest move is a huge mistake.
Gabriel’s comment sort of makes me wonder what’s in the WMD dossier we’re compiling.
Brothers Judd had a different twist on this:
“The Left has had a field day trying to pick apart the Administration’s rationale for war, so it seems like turnabout is only fair play. The most widely recognized problem with ignoring the UN and going it alone in Iraq was that we might get stuck with the entire task and whole bill for rebuilding the country afterwards. Had President Bush asked for help after the war the opponents of the war–Kofi Annan, China, Russia, France, Germany–would almost certainly have scoffed and refused. Today they consider it a victory that they’re going to replace us in the quagmire. And Br’er Bush just keeps hoppin’ along…”
“However, I do wonder whether the majority of Americans were willing to make sacrifices. The anti-American Vietnam left wasn’t, and they are
very powerful and very vocal. ”
The existence of a large anti-war faction during Vietnam tells us nothing about the willingness of Americans to make sacrifices when there is a good reason to. It simply tells us that the government can only go on kidnapping Americans and dumping them into a worthless cause for so long before their targets start staging a revolt.
Now of course there will be those that are hesitant to believe that the government’s proposed military action actually has the purpose and effect of enhancing America’s security (you know the old saying “Once bitten, twice shy”). Trying to draft these people would be an absolute, unmitigated disaster. Fortunately, there is no need to take that route; clearly, we have not heard any serious call for military volunteers, and I have no doubt whatsoever that when such a call does come, it will be answered.
Hitting up the UN or some of our “allies” for the extra manpower would also be a mistake. Having forces whose government actively opposed our mission from day one and showed no signs of changing their minds actively “participating” in it is not a good way to accomplish the mission. I hope that someone is actually being clever enough to be staging it like this:
Bush’s Opposition: We need to go to the UN.
Bush: No.
Bush’s Opposition: We need to go to the UN.
Bush: No.
Bush’s Opposition: We need to go to the UN.
Bush: Oh, all right, if you insist…
Bush (to UN): You guys wanna help out here?
UN: No.
Bush (to Opposition): The UN doesn’t want to help us. I guess we’re on our own. Sorry guys.
But so far it doesn’t look good. It’s too easy to spin this as Bush “realizing” that he’s in over his head and groveling to the same UN he blew off to bail him out (never mind that the UN blew us off when we proposed enforcing their own resolutions dating back to 1991). If, God help us, Bush actually believes that we’re in over our heads and our “allies” and the UN are our only hope, we and the Iraqis are completely screwed.
Ken;
I don’t think that protecting the South Vietnamese from the horrors of Communism was a “worthless cause”, but beyond that, in my view the problem there was that America likes winners. The American people aren’t happy about sacrificing to “hold the line” or “proportionately respond”. If sacrifices are going to be made, the American citizenry wants victory in return. Victory redeems the sacrifices in blood and treasury and so the citizenry wants to see real commitment to that before it forks out. Anything for victory, nothing for gestures.
The French are crowing awfully loud over here in Paris. And I’m referring to the centrists: Yes, Chirac and de Villepin are moderates by French political standards. I won’t even mention what the extremists are saying, ie, the 35% on the fascist right and the 35% on the fascist left.
What a fucking embarrassment and waste of time.
No, this is not a waste of time.
This is Bush teaching the swing voters via events he arranges.
Bush did this before the 2002 Election and our invasion of Iraq. He is doing it again now.
The discrediting of the U.N. and multilateral dilomacy in general via this initiative is setting the ground work for both future unilateral American foreign policy initiatives and for the Democratic primaries between now and March of 2004. When the Democratic presidential nominee will be decided by the front loaded Democratic primaries.
Glenn over at Instapundit has made much of Bush abandoning his base. That really doesn’t matter. What matters is what people vote against.
Bush is manipulating the Democrats to be highly anti-war, pro-multilateral so that both his base and swing voters will have a great deal to vote against.
Of course people who believe Bush is stupid won’t believe that until it is far too late.
Maybe, Trent. Mohammed Ali had one opponent: George Foreman. Bush has a lot more variables and imponderables to deal with in a highly volatile situation. I’m not sure that even a genius like Bush can pull of the strategic jujitsu you postulate. In the meantime, to an ordinary Joe like me, doesn’t look good.
Innouncement!!!