by Emile Nakhleh

Much blame could go around regarding the current chaos in Iraq and the recent territorial gains of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Four contributing factors stand out:

by Jim Lobe

I’ve been slowly reading Robert Gates’ Duty over the last week or so and some of it is quite pertinent in light of the recent recommendation by JINSA’s Michael Makovsky and Lt. Gen. David Deptula (ret.) in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama administration provide Israel with Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

I’ve been slowly reading Robert Gates’ Duty over the last week or so and some of it is quite pertinent in light of the recent recommendation by JINSA’s Michael Makovsky and Lt. Gen. David Deptula (ret.) in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama administration provide Israel with Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) bombs and B-52 bombers to deliver them against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Here’s what they wrote in their article entitled, “Sending a Bunker-Buster Message to Iran”:

By transferring to Israel MOPs and B-52Hs the administration would send a signal that its ally, which already has the will, now has the ability to prevent a nuclear Iran [a very dubious assertion, according to most experts]. Once they are delivered — ideally as the current six-month interim deal is set to expire in July — Iran will be put on notice that its nuclear program will come to an end, one way or another.

While Gates in his book (pp. 190-191] doesn’t say whether Israel requested the same weaponry in 2007, his description of the arguments presented, both pro and con, would certainly apply to Makovksy’s and Deptula’s arguments today. The passage is worth quoting in full, although the main point is summarized at the end when Gates quotes directly from what he told Bush in private. Here’s the passage as a whole:

Debate [about Iran's nuclear program] heated up considerably in May [2007], prompted by several Israeli military requests that, if satisfied, would greatly enhance their ability to strike the Iranian nuclear sites. In a meeting with the Joint Chiefs and me in the Tank on May 10, in the middle of a conversation on Afghanistan, the president suddenly asked if anybody was thinking about military action against Iran. He quickly added that the goal was of course to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons and that he “just wanted you to be thinking about it — not a call to arms.”

Two days later the national security team met with the president in his private dining room adjacent to the Oval Office. The participants included Cheney, Rice, Mullen, Bolten, Hadley, Hadley’s deputy Jim Jeffrey, and me. We addressed two questions: How do we answer the Israelis and what should we do about the Iranian nuclear program? In many respects, it was a reprise of the debate over the Syrian nuclear reactor the year before. Hadley asked me to lead off. When making my case to the president on a significant issue like this one, I always wrote out in advance the points I wanted to make, because I did not want to omit something important. Given Bush 43′s green light to Olmert on the Syrian reactor, I was very apprehensive as the meeting began.

I recommended saying no to all the Israelis’ requests. Giving them any of the items on their new list would signal U.S. support for them to attack Iran unilaterally: “At that point, we lose our ability to control our fate in the entire region.” I said we would be handing over the initiative regarding U.S. vital national interests to a foreign power, a government that, when we asked them not to attack Syria, did so anyway. We should offer to collaborate more closely with Israel, I continued, doing more on missile defense and other capabilities, “but Olmert should be told in the strongest possible terms not to act unilaterally.” The United States was not reconciled to Iran having nuclear weapons, but we needed a long-term solution, not just a one-to-three-year delay. I went on to say that a strike by the United States or Israel would end divisions in the Iranian government, strengthen the most radical elements, unify the country behind the government in their hatred of us, and demonstrate to all Iranians the need to develop nuclear weapons. I warned that Iran was not Syria — it would retaliate, putting at risk Iraq, Lebanon, oil supplies from the Gulf (which would lead to skyrocketing oil prices), and the end of the peace process, as well as increasing the likelihood of a Hizballah war against Israel. Addressing what I knew to be Cheney’s desire to deal with the Iranian nuclear program before Bush left office, I observed that our current efforts to isolate Iran, significantly increase their economic problems, and delay their nuclear program might not be successful in bringing about a change of policy in Tehran during the Bush presidency, but they would leave his successor a robust array of tools with which to apply pressure. Finally, I pointed out that the president’s own conditions for preemptive war had not been met, our own intelligence estimate would be used against us, and we would be the ones isolated, not Iran.

Cheney spoke next, and I knew what was coming. Matter-of-factly, he said he disagreed with everything I had said. The United States should give Israel everything it wanted. We could not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If we weren’t going to act, he said, then we should enable the Israelis. Twenty years on, he argued, if there was a nuclear-armed Iran, people would say the Bush administration could have stopped it. I interjected that twenty years on, people might also say that we not only didn’t stop them from getting nuclear weapons but made it inevitable. I was pretty sure Condi did not favor accommodating Israeli’s requests, but the way she expressed her concerns about not leaving our ally in the lurch or feeling isolated led Mullen and me after the meeting to worry that she might be changing her mind. Mullen talked about the difficulty of carrying out a successful attack. Hadley remained silent. At the end, the president was non-commital, clearly frustrated by the lack of good options for dealing with Iran. He had a lot of company in the room on that score.

That afternoon I flew to Colorado Springs to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Aboard the plane, I became increasingly worried that the president might be persuaded by Cheney and Olmert to act or to enable the Israelis to act, especially if Condi’s position was softening. I decided to communicate once again with Bush privately. I said,

“We must not make our vital interests in the entire Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Southwest Asia hostage to another nation’s decisions — no matter how close an ally. Above all, we ought not risk what we have gained in Iraq or the lives of our soldiers there on an Israeli military gamble in Iran. Olmert has his own agenda, and he will pursue it irrespective of our interests. …We will be bystanders to actions that affect us directly and dramatically. …Most evidence suggests we have some time. …The military option probably remains available for several years.  …A military attack by either Israel or the United States will, I believe — having watched these guys since 1979 — guarantee that the Iranians will develop nuclear weapons, and seek revenge. …A surprise attack on Iran risks a further conflict in the Gulf and all its potential consequences, with no consultation with the Congress or foreknowledge on the part of the American people. That strikes me as very dangerous, and not just for sustaining our efforts in the Gulf.”

Most of that should act as a rebuttal to Makovsky’s and Deptula’s dangerous recommendations.

The role that foreign views play in policy debate in Washington and especially on Capitol Hill has taken some strange forms lately, and none stranger than with the hot topic of the Iranian nuclear program. What an irony to hear American [...]]]> by Paul Pillar

via The National Interest

The role that foreign views play in policy debate in Washington and especially on Capitol Hill has taken some strange forms lately, and none stranger than with the hot topic of the Iranian nuclear program. What an irony to hear American neocons saying “Merci!” and “Vive La France!” after the French foreign minister suddenly added demands to, and thus spiked or at least delayed, a tentative preliminary agreement with the Iranians that was on the verge of being inked. Was it really that long ago that the same neocons were deriding France as one of the countries of old Europe that could not see the wisdom of launching that most ambitious, and most disastrous, of all neocon projects: the Iraq War? Remember eating freedom fries with your burgers? Remember how the war-makers in the Bush administration told France and other major allies and every other member of the United Nations that did not support the war to shove it, and then hooked the poodle Blair up to his leash and went to war anyway? One might be tempted to chalk up the different handling of France ten years ago and today to a change in French views. Governments themselves change, after all. But it was the rightist government of Jacques Chirac that was in power when the neocons started their war in Iraq. Today the French president is a socialist. Not the direction of turnaround one would expect.

No, this history had nothing to do with anyone’s wisdom or substantive views. Both a decade ago and today, the neocons have just been using France as a convenient prop and support for debating points, or ignoring it to the extent it was not otherwise convenient. This gets to the first couple of rules about showing appropriate respect for opinions from abroad. One is not to use people as props. Another is to be consistent in one’s own thought, policies, and behavior, as if foreign opinion really were having a constructive impact on one’s own thinking. The neocons here are showing consistency in one respect; people who never met a U.S. war they didn’t like were responsible for starting one war ten years ago, and are now pushing policies toward another Middle Easern state that increase the chance of another war. But of course there is not any consistency in the attitude toward European allies.

Showing a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, including mankind overseas, does not mean bowing to the views of any particular slice of mankind. The writers of the Declaration of Independence who used that phrase about respect to opinions were explaining, after all, why they were spelling out their reasons for committing a revolutionary act. They were not submitting to any foreigner’s view as to whether to commit that act. The interests of one’s own nation need to come first. A modern clarion statement of that principle, with regard to the same issue about Iran and nuclear matters, comes today from Tom Friedman, who reminds us:

We, America, are not just hired lawyers negotiating a deal for Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs, which they alone get the final say on. We, America, have our own interests in not only seeing Iran’s nuclear weapons capability curtailed, but in ending the 34-year-old Iran-U.S. cold war, which has harmed our interests and those of our Israeli and Arab friends.

That should be obvious. It should go without saying. But a major chunk of the American body politic is acting today directly contrary to that principle. They use some states as props; they act as lawyers for other states.

Note that the Declaration of Independence refers to the opinions of mankind, not the rhetoric or agendas of foreign governments. Here, too, a principle of showing appropriate respect for opinion is being violated. Even those American politicians who show no shame or compunction about acting as lawyers for a foreign state, Israel, make the further mistake of equating the interests of that state with the rhetoric and agenda of that state’s current government. On the matter of Iran and its nuclear program, as on some other important issues, the pronouncements of Benjamin Netanyahu definitely should not be equated with the interests of Israel. Knowledgeable and patriotic Israelis have a very different view about what approach on this matter would be good for Israel. Looking beyond Netanyahu’s short-sighted strategy of unending conflict and hostility, an improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations would be very much in Israel’s long-term interests, in addition certainly to the interests of the United States.

Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) has been exhibiting all of these patterns in perhaps the most extreme form of any member of Congress, to the point of being a caricature of such things. He was in exceptional form following a supposedly classified briefing on Wednesday for senators from Secretary of State Kerry, Vice President Biden, and Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, who has been the lead negotiator on Iran. Kirk compared the Obama administration to Neville Chamberlain and, while Kirk is doing everything he can to overturn a diplomatic process designed to prevent both a war and an Iranian nuclear weapon, he said “Today is the day I witnessed the future of nuclear war in the Middle East.”

The briefing was “fairly anti-Israeli,” Kirk said. “I was supposed to disbelieve everything the Israelis had just told me, and I think the Israelis probably have a pretty good intelligence service.” So a United States senator was calling the U.S. secretary of state and the vice president liars because of what a foreign government had told him.

Kirk wasn’t finished. He berated “Wendy” because her “record on North Korea is a total failure and embarrassment to her service.” Such a blast ignores the history of U.S. handling of the North Korean issue, in which the administration that came after the one in which Sherman earlier served effectively abandoned a negotiated agreement and returned to diplomacy only after the North Koreans had tested a couple of nuclear devices. But as long as previous records on other issues are being dug up—and what certain foreign governments are saying is being invoked—Kirk would be advised to review the record of his favorite foreign prime minister regarding the Iraq War, for which Netanyahu was a vocal cheerleader, spewing assertions that turned out to be badly mistaken and misguided.

The approach followed by Kirk, and others in less fulsome and extreme form, is not only failing to show decent respect in the spirit of the founders; it is an approach that deserves no respect itself. To the extent it comes to determine policy it endangers respect for the United States.

by Wayne White

In his Oct. 29 Foreign Policy article, “How We Won in Iraq”, General David Petraeus characterizes the 2003 US invasion and departure of US troops in 2011 as an American victory. This triumphant — though distorted — version of that searing saga seems acceptable to many Americans not [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Wayne White

In his Oct. 29 Foreign Policy article, “How We Won in Iraq”, General David Petraeus characterizes the 2003 US invasion and departure of US troops in 2011 as an American victory. This triumphant — though distorted — version of that searing saga seems acceptable to many Americans not only because it has been repeated so often, but also because it is so reassuring. Yet, despite the immense effort and sacrifice on the part of the US military and civilian personnel who served in Iraq, there are profound reasons to question such an upbeat conclusion.

Losers and winners

The Bush administration’s goal extended far beyond the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and initially focused on the destruction of his alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). No WMD were found. The administration also planned to transform Iraq into a Western-style democracy that would function as a beacon to those suffering under nearby authoritarian regimes. Instead, even now Iraqis are saddled with an abusive, dysfunctional, non-transparent, corrupt, and sectarian-based government that resembles a democracy more in appearance than substance.

Rather than achieving a quick victory followed by a swift, orderly transition, the US became embroiled in a prolonged and bloody anti-insurgency campaign that cost well over 30,000 American casualties. The invasion also gave birth to al-Qaeda’s most damaging subsidiary, cost over $1 trillion, and for over five years diverted a huge amount of focus, military power, and spending from the important NATO effort in Afghanistan. Finally, instead of the US, the West, and moderate Arab states having considerable influence with Iraq’s new leaders, Baghdad’s most influential partner is Iran, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is supporting the Assad regime in Syria.

As for the Iraqis, Sunni Arabs have been disenfranchised by the Shi’a-dominated successor regime, untold numbers of them have been killed, many of their communities have been ravaged by war, and well over a million were driven from their homes and businesses in the greater Baghdad area. A majority of Iraq’s roughly one million Christians have been forced to flee in the face of killings, church burnings and attacks on their businesses. Even the dominant Shi’a majority have suffered terrible casualties and great loss of property at the hands of the robust Sunni Arab insurgency back in 2003-2007, the depredations of their own rogue militias, and the drumfire of terrorist attacks and bombings on the part of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to this day.

For Arab Iraqis, insurgent sabotage and waves of looting following the invasion have devastated most of the country’s state industries, large private businesses, and all government ministries save one. Universities, hospitals, schools, banks, archives, much of Iraq’s electrical and oil infrastructure and the country’s rich archaeological heritage have also been severely damaged.

If there is a relative winner, it could be Iraq’s Kurdish community. Separated from the rest of the country by their own militias defending the borders of the Kurdish Autonomous Region (KRG), the majority of predominantly Kurdish areas have been spared the high levels of casualties and damage experienced elsewhere. In fact, the KRG now enjoys considerable prosperity (and more autonomy than at any time since the creation of the modern Iraqi state) with a host of Arab Iraqis taking advantage of Iraqi Kurdistan’s booming tourist industry every year to seek a respite from life farther south. Nevertheless, from late 1991 until Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, most of the Kurds now within the KRG already had been largely protected from Saddam’s rule within a northern sanctuary with much the same borders as the KRG.

The troop surge myth

Frontloaded prominently in Petraeus’ discussion of the “Surge of Ideas” is the new strategic approach he brought to the table. Petraeus’ shift toward increasingly embedding US troops within Iraqi communities and other tactical innovations was indeed more enlightened than the approach of his predecessors. Nonetheless, he does suggest strongly that the additional 30,000 US troops made a substantial difference. Yet, of the latter, only 5,000 were sent outside Baghdad to address severe problems in mainly Sunni Arab areas, so only in Baghdad was that reinforcement of any real significance.

Buried far below and evidently rated second to Petraeus’ “clear, hold and build” strategy was the US decision to exploit the so-called “Sunni Arab Awakening.” His description of the emergence of this phenomenon — the most critical game changer from late 2006 through 2008 — contains some notable errors.

First off, the decision on the part of many Sunni Arab insurgent and allied tribal leaders to seek a deal with American forces did not “begin several months before the surge” when one “talented US army brigade commander” decided to work with one “courageous Sunni sheikh” at Ramadi. The first Sunni Arab offer to cooperate with US forces — and in a far more sweeping manner — was brought to Washington’s attention in mid-2004, over two years before the events outside Ramadi in 2006. Senior military officers in the field at the time told me that other offers at least as significant as the one Petraeus cites occurred as early as 2003.

Petraeus is correct in his assertion that in 2003 many Sunni Arabs, despite their association with the former regime, still hoped to play a constructive role in the new Iraq. However, their offers of help were cast aside by the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Jerry Bremer, when he dismissed the entire Iraqi Army even while giving Petraeus writ to reach out locally in the latter’s northern 101st Airborne Division sector.

It is therefore wrong to place the blame for missing this opportunity exclusively on “Iraqi authorities in Baghdad” (who had precious little authority relative to Bremer’s at that point). In fact, senior US military officers on the scene acting on instructions (some pre-dating the invasion) recruited many thousands of Sunni Arab officers willing to remain in the Iraqi army to help maintain order; they also were waved off by Bremer.

Missed opportunities, lingering effects

In the summer of 2004, the US army and Marines fighting in various sectors west and northwest of Baghdad were approached by a number of insurgent and tribal leaders seeking a broad-based deal with US forces. They did not regard Iraqi forces as a significant foe, nor did they trust the largely Shi’a/Kurdish Iraqi central government. Yet, so serious were these Sunni Arab leaders about stopping the fighting with Coalition forces & turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) that they agreed to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Tikrit, even though an agreement between the Sunni Arab leaders and Allawi could not be reached.

So, instead of grasping this outstretched hand that would have spared vast numbers of US and Iraqi casualties over the following two bloody years, the Bush administration deferred to an Iraqi government dominated by anti-Sunni Arab elements. Only when the uncontrollable maelstrom of bloodshed described by Petraeus erupted in early 2006 did the administration reluctantly decide to make the proverbial “deal with the devil.” This was driven by the need to gain some measure of traction in coping with a situation that had expanded to include the scourge of wholesale sectarian cleansing that displaced at least 1.5 million Iraqis and eradicated the once rich culture of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad.

Once that decision had been made, the Sunni Arab “Awakening” deal took more than 100,000 insurgents off the battlefield and turned them into critical US assets against AQI. Only then could sufficient forces be freed up to crack down effectively on rampaging Shi’a militias — primarily Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army.”

Petraeus also wrongly paints al-Maliki as supportive of the deal with Sunni Arab combatants, albeit merely in Sunni Arab areas, in 2007. From my vantage point in US Intelligence, I watched as the Iraqi PM set about actively trying to torpedo the arrangement during 2007 — even going to the extreme of ordering a major Iraqi army attack on an Awakening force west of Baghdad (in a Sunni Arab area), thankfully headed off by US forces, in addition to other attempted attacks on specific “Awakening” commanders as well as the kidnapping of some of their relatives.

Petraeus rejects the notion that “we got lucky with the Awakening,” but that is, in fact, far closer to the truth because the “Awakening” emanated from Iraq’s Sunni Arab community — not from “a conscious decision” on the part of the US (save for a belated US decision to accept a deal that had been on the table for two years). Had the Bush administration instead continued to reject such a deal in 2007-08, US forces probably would not have had nearly such a decisive impact on the war — regardless of Petraeus’ otherwise more creative approach to the conflict. Conversely, had Washington allowed the deal to be accepted far earlier, Petraeus’ predecessor, Gen. George Casey, would have enjoyed a lot more success (despite a less savvy tactical approach).

Petraeus, nonetheless, is correct that welcoming — rather than spurning — Iraq’s Sunni Arabs is perhaps the only way out of the current escalating spiral of violence. Unfortunately, Maliki’s determination to minimize Sunni Arab political participation over the past four years especially has so poisoned the well of sectarian trust that it could be very difficult to achieve such a shift in policy so long as al-Maliki remains in power. It is, therefore, supremely ironic that after ignoring years of US entreaties to abandon his marginalization and persecution of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and embrace reconciliation instead, al-Maliki should be meeting with President Obama today asking for American anti-terrorism assistance to address the violence he and his cronies have done so much to provoke.

by Wayne White

The Bush administration’s deception and irresponsible military action involving Iraq had a wide-ranging adverse impact on populations in countries critical to the enforcement of international standards regarding war crimes. Yesterday’s vote by the British parliament to oppose UK participation in military action against Syria illustrates just how deep that [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Wayne White

The Bush administration’s deception and irresponsible military action involving Iraq had a wide-ranging adverse impact on populations in countries critical to the enforcement of international standards regarding war crimes. Yesterday’s vote by the British parliament to oppose UK participation in military action against Syria illustrates just how deep that mistrust and anxiety still runs today.  Yet, as British Prime Minister David Cameron has said, failure to act could give the Syrian regime a virtual “green light” to take even more brutal measures against the opposition and Syrian civilians. Nonetheless, the vote should warn the Obama Administration to slow down (and perhaps scale back) its plans for punitive military action considerably in order to address the serious concerns that surround it.

Five days after the August 21 attack, we have just learned, a regime attack was launched against an urban area in the vicinity of Aleppo using incendiary munitions that terribly burned scores of schoolchildren. This additional outrage took place even before Bashar al-Asad and his unconditional allies in Moscow and Tehran were buoyed by the news from London. Though not banned, the use of horrific flammable munitions against an urban area could offer yet another a foretaste of what is to come in the absence of a firm international response.

Official and public disquiet over the planned strike emanating from the UK, Germany, global media, and the US typically features concerns associated with the distortions of intelligence and military overreach of the Bush Administration ten years ago. Although wariness toward potentially deceitful government behavior is a healthy counterbalance overall, such concerns can be taken to extremes.

In the wake of the Bush Administration’s appalling abuses and their weighty negative consequences, a global mindset has developed in which practically all pronouncements out of Washington are subject not only to great scrutiny, but almost knee-jerk skepticism — even when pitted against assertions on the part of notoriously abusive and deceitful authoritarian governments like Syria’s that face virtually no domestic accountability whatsoever.

Consequently, there have been wide-ranging demands for a UN Security Council (UNSC) mandate despite its futility in the face of a certain Russian veto because Moscow fully supports the Syrian regime in its war of internal repression and is incapable of viewing the facts of this case impartially.  Similar Russian tolerance of atrocious war crimes in Bosnia on the part of another of Moscow’s allies in the 1990’s compelled a NATO coalition to act in lieu of the UNSC.  But that was prior to the 2002-2003 episode of US (and UK) intelligence deception in support of a vastly more extensive military intervention.

Still, the Obama Administration must deal with the situation as it is.  Barreling ahead with a “compressed” timeline for punitive strikes despite extensive pushback resembles in the eyes of many just the sort of brash behavior exhibited by the Bush Administration.  And this is precisely what President Obama (and French President Francois Hollande) should avoid under the circumstances.

Personally, I believe some observers are exaggerating the potential fallout from limited military action in this case.  In fact, much of the bluster from Damascus and Tehran probably consists mainly of scare tactics meant to play to nervous Western constituencies. However, to head off any regrettable consequences, allied punitive action against Syria must narrowly focus on the issue at hand—and not be expanded to include strikes meant to weaken the regime and play out over two to three days.

Critical to salvaging the situation and calming many of those now hesitant, the White House must patiently await the results of the UN inspection team.  UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said the findings should be made available to the UN Security Council on Sunday.

Sunday is only two days away. The Syrian military is tied down holding various vital positions lest the rebels move in and seize them, so it cannot simply go away and hide in preparation for punitive strikes strikes — even if proper consultations require another week. And if the UN inspection results confirm the use of nerve agent against the affected Damascus suburbs, that information could reinvigorate the Western allies to act more as Washington hopes (even if, as expected, the Russians once again block UNSC consensus to serve their own craven interests in Syria).

Criticism of former Senator Chuck Hagel for not backing the 2007 US “troop surge” in Iraq demands an explanation of why that relatively small reinforcement was not the main driver for reversing Iraq’s descent into violent chaos. In fact, when proposed in late 2006, there was widespread doubt about its potential [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Criticism of former Senator Chuck Hagel for not backing the 2007 US “troop surge” in Iraq demands an explanation of why that relatively small reinforcement was not the main driver for reversing Iraq’s descent into violent chaos. In fact, when proposed in late 2006, there was widespread doubt about its potential for success among experts. And that skepticism was not, as detractors allege, off target. In reality, a different change in Bush Administration Iraq policy was the primary game-changer. Nonetheless, widespread belief still persists that the troop surge alone reversed the downward spiral in Iraq during 2003-2006. Some have tried to correct the record, but without much success.

When I served with the Iraq Study Group (ISG) led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton in 2006, many of its core Middle East experts felt the “troop surge” would fail because it was far too small. It increased US troops in Iraq by less than 20 percent. The situation, which included the robust Sunni Arab insurgency, widespread al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) terrorism and rampant sectarian cleansing, had gotten too far out of control for so few troops to make a real difference. Some believed as many as five times the 21,500 troops the Bush Administration sent in were needed. After all, troop levels had risen and fallen modestly before with little change in what had been a grindingly indecisive anti-insurgency war.

Unknown to the ISG (and evidently most of everyone outside the executive branch) the Bush Administration had quietly made another decision truly capable of sparking a major improvement on the ground in Iraq. The White House agreed to a deal with the bulk of the Sunni Arab insurgents fighting US forces. The insurgents not only wanted to stop fighting US/UK forces, but also to partner with Coalition forces against al-Qaida in Iraq. Although holding their own and inflicting heavy casualties, the insurgents had tired of suffering heavy losses themselves, were appalled by damage to their own communities from the fighting, and had been angered by extremist AQI abuses in their home towns and villages.

In fact, insurgent leaders began approaching US forces over two years earlier with the same offer. But it was rebuffed by the Bush Administration (despite the support of many US military officers in Iraq) because the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government bitterly opposed such a deal. In late 2006, however, in the face of a severe spike in violence — and despite more objections from the Iraqi government — the US accepted the deal. That triggered what was called Iraq’s Sunni Arab “Awakening” (up to 100,000 Sunni Arab insurgents changing sides).

It took nearly two more years of hard fighting to bring most all Sunni Arab insurgents into the arrangement, weaken the power of AQI, and curb sectarian cleansing. The modest US “troop surge” improved tactics set in motion by General David Petraeus, and gains in Iraqi Army professionalism helped too, but these were not nearly as critical as what some called the far more sweeping “deal with the devil.”

Sadly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who objected to the deal well into 2008, continues to exclude the Sunni Arab community from the Iraqi political mainstream. Despite assurances to the contrary, he has hounded many Sunni Arab fighters who took part in the “Awakening”, arresting and even taking out a good number of them. This has soured Sunni Arabs on Maliki and his Shi’a allies, causing enough Sunni Arabs to resume assisting AQI to make it difficult to stop the lethal bombings.

Why the decision to make this deal with the vast majority of the insurgents was withheld from the Iraq Study Group (and others) is unknown to me. It almost surely would have changed our recommendations, and likewise might well have made lawmakers like Chuck Hagel less skeptical of what otherwise appeared to be an inadequate fix in the face of a far greater challenge.

Equally bizarre has been the sloppy use of the US “troop surge” by most American media outlets as misleading shorthand for everything that altered the Iraqi playing field back in 2007-2008. As a result, critics continue to hound opponents (like Hagel) about a troop surge that could well have been a military failure if not for the stunning, belated, and initially secretive deal that transformed most of our Sunni Arab foes in Iraq into American allies.

Photo: US Army soldiers move down a street as they start a clearing mission in Dora, Iraq, on May 3, 2007. Soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division are patrolling the streets in Dora. DoD photo by Spc. Elisha Dawkins, US Army. (Released)

via Tom Dispatch

On January 11th, 11 years to the day after the Bush administration opened itsnotorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s deeply flawed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. The filmmakers and distributors are evidently ignorant of [...]]]> By Karen J. Greenberg

via Tom Dispatch

On January 11th, 11 years to the day after the Bush administration opened itsnotorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s deeply flawed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. The filmmakers and distributors are evidently ignorant of the significance of the date — a perfect indication of the carelessness and thoughtlessness of the film, which will unfortunately substitute for actual history in the minds of many Americans.

The sad fact is that Zero Dark Thirty could have been written by the tight circle of national security advisors who counseled President George W. Bush to create the post-9/11 policies that led to Guantanamo, the global network of borrowed “black sites” that added up to an offshore universe of injustice, and the grim torture practices – euphemistically known as “enhanced interrogation techniques” — that went with them.  It’s also a film that those in the Obama administration who have championed non-accountability for such shameful policies could and (evidently did) get behind. It might as well be called Back to the Future, Part IV, for the film, like the country it speaks to, seems stuck forever in that time warp moment of revenge and hubris that swept the country just after 9/11.

As its core, Bigelow’s film makes the bald-faced assertion that torture did help the United States track down the perpetrator of 9/11. Zero Dark Thirty – for anyone who doesn’t know by now — is the story of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a young CIA agent who believes that information from a detainee named Ammar will lead to bin Laden. After weeks, maybe months of torture, he does indeed provide a key bit of information that leads to another piece of information that leads… well, you get the idea. Eventually, the name of bin Laden’s courier is revealed. From the first mention of his name, Maya dedicates herself to finding him, and he finally leads the CIA to the compound where bin Laden is hiding.  Of course, you know how it all ends.

However compelling the heroine’s determination to find bin Laden may be, the fact is that Bigelow has bought in, hook, line, and sinker, to the ethos of the Bush administration and its apologists. It’s as if she had followed an old government memo and decided to offer in fictional form step-by-step instructions for the creation, implementation, and selling of Bush-era torture and detention policies.

Here, then, are the seven steps that bring back the Bush administration and should help Americans learn how to love torture, Bigelow-style.

First, Rouse Fear. From its opening scene, Zero Dark Thirty equates our post-9/11 fears with the need for torture. The movie begins in darkness with the actual heartbreaking cries and screams for help of people trapped inside the towers of the World Trade Center: “I’m going to die, aren’t I?… It’s so hot. I’m burning up…” a female voice cries out. As those voices fade, the black screen yields to a full view of Ammar being roughed up by men in black ski masks and then strung up, arms wide apart.

The sounds of torture replace the desperate pleas of the victims. “Is he ever getting out?” Maya asks. “Never,” her close CIA associate Dan (Jason Clarke) answers.  These are meant to be words of reassurance in response to the horrors of 9/11. Bigelow’s first step, then, is to echo former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s mantra from that now-distant moment in which he claimed the nation needed to go to “the dark side.”  That was part of his impassioned demand that, given the immense threat posed by al-Qaeda, going beyond the law was the only way to seek retribution and security.

Bigelow also follows Cheney’s lead into a world of fear.  The Bush administration understood that, for their global dreams, including a future invasion of Iraq, to become reality, fear was their best ally. From Terre Haute to El Paso, Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, Americans were to be regularly reminded that they were deeply and eternally endangered by terrorists.

Bigelow similarly keeps the fear monitor bleeping whenever she can. Interspersed with the narrative of the bin Laden chase, she provides often blood-filled footage from terrorist attacks around the globe in the decade after 9/11: the 2004 bombings of oil installations in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that killed 22; the 2005 suicide bombings in London that killed 56; the 2008 Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad that killed 54 people; and the thwarted Times Square bombing of May, 2010. We are in constant jeopardy, she wants us to remember, and uses Maya to remind us of this throughout.

Second, Undermine the Law. Torture is illegal under both American and international law.  It was only pronounced “legal” in a series of secret memorandums produced by the Bush Justice Department and approved at the highest levels of the administration. (Top officials, including Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, evidently even had torture techniques demonstrated for them in the White House before green-lighting them.)  Maintaining that there was no way Americans could be kept safe via purely legal methods, they asked for and were given secret legal authority to make torture the go-to option in their Global War on Terror. Yet Bigelow never even nods toward this striking rethinking of the law. She assumes the legality of the acts she portrays up close and personal, only hedging her bets toward the movie’s end when she indicates in passing that the legal system was a potential impediment to getting bin Laden. “Who the hell am I supposed to ask [for confirmation about the courier], some guy at Gitmo who’s all lawyered up?” asks Obama’s national security advisor in the filmic run-up to the raid.

Just as new policies were put in place to legalize torture, so the detention of terror suspects without charges or trials (including people who, we now know, were treated horrifically despite being innocent of anything) became a foundational act of the administration. Specifically, government lawyers were employed to create particularly tortured (if you’ll excuse the word) legal documents exempting detainees from the Geneva Conventions, thus enabling their interrogation under conditions that blatantly violated domestic and international laws.

Zero Dark Thirty accepts without hesitation or question the importance of this unconstitutional detention policy as crucial to the torture program. From the very first days of the war on terror, the U.S. government rounded up individuals globally and began to question them brutally. Whether they actually had information to reveal, whether the government had any concrete evidence against them, they held hundreds — in the end, thousands – of detainees in U.S. custody at secret CIA black sites worldwide, in the prisons of allied states known for their own torture policies, at Bagram Detention Center in Afghanistan, and of course at Guantanamo, which was the crown jewel of the Bush administration’s offshore detention system.

Dan and Maya themselves not only travel to secret black sites to obtain valuable information from detainees, but to the cages and interrogation booths at Bagram where men in those now-familiar orange jumpsuits are shown awaiting a nightmare experience.  Bigelow’s film repeatedly suggests that it was crucially important for national security to keep a pool of potential information sources — those detainees — available just in case they might one day turn out to have information.

Third, Indulge in the Horror: Torture is displayed onscreen in what can only be called pornographic detail for nearly the film’s first hour. In this way, Zero Dark Thirty eerily mimics the obsessive, essentially fetishistic approach of Bush’s top officials to the subject.  Cheney, former Secretary of DefenseDonald Rumsfeld, Cheney’s former Chief of Staff David Addington, and John Yoo from the Office of Legal Counsel, among others, plunged into the minutiae of “enhanced interrogation” tactics, micro-managing just what levels of abuse should and should not apply, would and would not constitute torture after 9/11.

In black site after black site, on victim after victim, the movie shows acts of torture in exquisite detail, Bigelow’s camera seeming to relish its gruesomeness: waterboarding, stress positions, beatings, sleep deprivation resulting in memory loss and severe disorientation, sexual humiliation, containment in a small box, and more. Whenever she gets the chance, Bigelow seems to take the opportunity to suggest that this mangling of human flesh and immersion in brutality on the part of Americans is at least understandable and probably worthwhile.  The film’s almost subliminal message on the subject of torture should remind us of the way in which a form of sadism-as-patriotic-duty filtered down to the troops on the ground, as evidenced by the now infamous 2004 photos from Abu Ghraib of smiling American soldiers offering thumbs-up responses to their ability to humiliate and hurt captives in dog collars.

Fourth, Dehumanize the Victims. Like the national security establishment that promoted torture policies, Bigelow dehumanizes her victims. Despite repeated beatings, humiliations, and aggressive torture techniques of various sorts, Ammar never becomes even a faintly sympathetic character to anyone in the film. As a result, there is never anyone for the audience to identify with who becomes emotionally distraught over the abuses. Dehumanization was a necessary tool in promoting torture; now, it is a necessary tool in promotingZero Dark Thirty, which desensitizes its audience in ways that should be frightening to us and make us wonder who exactly we have become in the years since 9/11.

Fifth, Never Doubt That Torture Works.  Given all this, it’s a small step to touting the effectiveness of torture in eliciting the truth. “In the end, everybody breaks, bro’: it’s biology,” Dan says to his victim.  He also repeats over and over, “If you lie to me, I hurt you” — meaning, “If I hurt you, you won’t lie to me.” Maya concurs, telling Ammar, bruised, bloodied, and begging for her help, that he can stop his pain by telling the truth.

How many times does the American public need to be told that torture did notyield the results the government promised? How many times does it need to besaid that waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, 183 times obviously didn’t work? How many times does it need to be pointed out that torture can — and did — produce misleading or false information, notably in the torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the Libyan who ran an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and who confessed under torture that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Sixth, Hold No One Accountable. The Obama administration made thedetermination that holding Bush administration figures, CIA officials, or the actual torturers responsible for what they did in a court of law was far more trouble than it might ever be worth. Instead, the president chose to move onand officially never look back. Bigelow takes advantage of this passivity to suggest to her audience that the only downside of torture is the fear of accountability. As he prepares to leave Pakistan, Dan tells Maya, “You gotta be real careful with the detainees now. Politics are changing and you don’t want to be the last one holding the dog collar when the oversight committee comes…”

The sad truth is that Zero Dark Thirty could not have been produced in its present form if any of the officials who created and implemented U.S. torture policy had been held accountable for what happened, or any genuine sunshine had been thrown upon it. With scant public debate and no public record of accountability, Bigelow feels free to leave out even a scintilla of criticism of that torture program. Her film is thus one more example of the fact that without accountability, the pernicious narrative continues, possibly gaining traction as it does.

Seventh, Employ the Media. While the Bush administration had the Fox television series 24 as a weekly reminder that torture keeps us safe, the current administration, bent on its no-accountability policy, has Bigelow’s film on its side. It’s the perfect piece of propaganda, with all the appeal that naked brutality, fear, and revenge can bring.

Hollywood and most of its critics have embraced the film. It has already been named among the best films of the year, and is considered a shoe-in for Oscar nominations. Hollywood, that one-time bastion of liberalism, has provided the final piece in the perfect blueprint for the whitewashing of torture policy.  If that isn’t a happily-ever-after ending, what is?

Karen J. Greenberg, a TomDispatch regular, is the Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School. She is the author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days and the co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib.

Copyright 2013 Karen J. Greenberg

Reports that FBI counterterrorism training programs relied heavily on Islamophobic material has sent shockwaves through the FBI and the Department of Justice. Wired’s Spencer Ackerman has closely followed the influence of FBI trainer William Gawthrop’s presentation, “The Sources and Patterns of Terrorism in [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

Reports that FBI counterterrorism training programs relied heavily on Islamophobic material has sent shockwaves through the FBI and the Department of Justice. Wired’s Spencer Ackerman has closely followed the influence of FBI trainer William Gawthrop’s presentation, “The Sources and Patterns of Terrorism in Islamic Law,” and notes that the slides have been cited in Justice Department training material which portray an existential battle between Islam and the West.

Ackerman notes that in 2007, Gawthrop taught a class on “intelligence and homeland security” and the National Defense Intelligence College. A ThinkProgress investigation into Gawthrop’s background reveals he was part of a U.S. Army War College think tank, the Proteus Management Group (PMG), at which Islamophobic training material and papers were regularly produced and shared.

Pat Cohn, a contractor for the Army who works at the War College and is listed as a contact for the group, told ThinkProgress that, to the best of his knowledge, Proteus had been shut down when it lost its funding. He could not say when the funding had been cut. Portions of the project’s website have been erased but a combination of a cached version of the website and documents still hosted on U.S. military web-servers reveal a DOD operation which served as a breeding ground for the Islamophobic narratives present in Gawthrop’s presentations.

Proteus’ mission was to “consider differing values and perceptions,” and “frame complex issues holistically.” A banner on the now-erased Proteus website reflects the group’s “outside the box” mission.

Proteus, which was sponsored by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence and the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership, hosted Gawthrop as a “PMG Fellow.” A March 2007 Proteus newsletter directs readers to one of Gawthrop’s articles in which he suggests the ideas of Islam should be “countered” through “critical vulnerabilities.” He writes:

Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal; portions were ghostwritten by others; portions were lost or redacted, and it was revised and re-issued by another mortal. Similar vulnerabilities may be found in Mohammad’s character as a political and military leader, the character of other Clerics in the Modern Era, as well as the topics addressed in the Haddiths.

But Gawthrop’s portrayal of Islam as inherently violent — indeed he glosses over the history of Christian wars of aggression by declaring “the Crusades were a delayed response to Jihad” — and at odds with Western civilization was hardly outside the norm in the “future” research conducted at Proteus.

Documents hosted on DOD webservers and associated with the Proteus program lay bare a culture of hostility toward Islam and closely resemble the messages in Gawthrop’s training materials.

A “Proteus Monograph Series” on “Truth, Perception, And Consequences,” authored by Christine A. R. MacNulty, reads:

[The Enlightenment] was the time of a major paradigm shift for the West, away from the authoritarian epistemology of medieval religious doctrine and towards an empirical epistemology based on the scientific method. The Islamic world has not been through a similar shift, which could explain its current predicament. [...]

While the [Islamic] radicals permit no creativity in general, they exhibit great creativity in terms of tactics and the development of IEDs, bombs, and other weaponry. They are innovative in their uses of technology such as cellphones. But behind them are still the concepts of revenge, honor, and “face” mixed with resentment and envy of the West.

In a presentation delivered by Cynthia E. Ayers at a Proteus workshop in August 2006, she warns that the Bush administration’s offer of incentives for Iran to cease nuclear enrichment could “be interpreted by Iranian leaders as an offer to pay ‘tribute’ in submission to Islam.” The presentation concludes with this slide.

While public attention has focused on Gawthrop’s presence at the FBI, documents from Proteus would suggest that the Islamophobic narratives in his presentations were common, if not actively encouraged, by the Department of Defense at the Army War College.

In a short piece for Foreign Affairs, University of Maryland doctoral student and former Brookings researcher [...]]]> As pro-Israel and/or Iran hawks have been having conniptions about Iranian influence via Hezbollah in Lebanon, it’s worth noting that this is a U.S. demon created in part by the U.S.’s own actions — or inactions — as it were.

In a short piece for Foreign Affairs, University of Maryland doctoral student and former Brookings researcher Bilal Saab writes that U.S. disengagement from Lebanon — during most of the 1980s, 1990s and half of the ’00s — created a vacuum that Hezbollah, with Iranian support, was able to fill.

“Left exposed, Lebanon could not prevent Iran from projecting its power through Hezbollah, which evolved from its original state as an unexceptional guerilla force into a highly professional and well-armed paramilitary organization,” he observes.

Eli has a piece coming up on this issue, so I don’t want to say too much. But there are also two other very important moments of inaction that have created Hezbollah’s continued ascent: the 2006 Lebanon War and the 2003 Iranian outreach that went ignored by the Bush Administration.

On the former, Saab writes (with my emphasis):

How could all of Lebanon’s accomplishments since 2005, to which Washington contributed, be so quickly undone? The United States is partly to blame for the situation, having made several mistakes itself in Lebanon over the past few years — most significantly, demonstrating reluctance to intervene promptly and forcefully to prevent Israel from using excessive military force against Lebanon during its summer 2006 conflict with Hezbollah. Not only did Israel’s military campaign fail to enhance Israeli security — a primary American concern — but it strengthened Hezbollah and undermined the pro-American Lebanese government then led by Fouad Siniora.

On the latter point — the Bush Administration’s refusal to start a diplomatic process with Iran in 2003, at the height of neoconservative power — Saab writes the U.S. needs to bring the issue of Hezbollah up in any potential U.S.-Iran talks. He says (my emphasis, again):

The United States… may need to constrain Hezbollah for the long-term through other means — namely, initiating a strategic dialogue with Iran. Back in 2003, the Iranians privately offered to discuss matters related to Hezbollah with the United States in return for undisclosed security guarantees, but the Bush administration chose to ignore them.

Saab (who I believe is Lebanese given his academic background), clearly writes from a very anti-Iran, anti-Hezbollah, and anti-Syria perspective. Nonetheless, his historical perspectives and astute analysis provide some counterpoints to the hawks’ braying about Ahmadinejad in Southern Lebanon. Some of these same hawks, and certainly their ideological comrades, were in power when the two cited decisions were undertaken. And by their ideological rigidity — inability to criticize Israel and/or refusal to engage Iran — they’ve contributed to creating their own worst nightmare on Israel’s norther border.