There are few people I respect more in Washington than Dick Lugar. There are issues I disagree with him on–especially in domestic affairs, but in foreign affairs I’m pretty much in agreement with the guy. We’d probably differ on Latin American policies in the 1980s, but that is another issue.
Sunday, something that has gotten far too little coverage was said by Lugar:
But when Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar was asked Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” whether less than three months would be too soon to hand over political power in the strife-torn nation, he said, “It may be, and I think it’s probably time to have that debate.”
Lugar said too that the Bush administration had yet to share with him its plans for a U.S. ambassador to Iraq or how to select and protect the estimated 3,000 necessary embassy staff.
“At this point,” he said, “I would have thought there would have been a more comprehensive plan.”
Having decided Iraqis would hold elections before writing a constitution, it would perhaps be consistent for the president to hand over governance of the country before it’s governable.
Lugar, Hagel, and Biden have worked together as a strong team in trying to get the President to plan better. I think the time has come to level with the American people that we will be there for a long time. For some time now, Lugar has argued for a minimum of five years. Given all the problems with the President’s prior plans, isn’t it time to consult with some of the wise old men around Washington?
I supported this war. I now regret that, but that is pointless to dwell on now in terms of going forward (not that there aren’t political ramifications). We have no choice, but to make Iraq work now and trying to do it exceptionally fast is folly. If we don’t get Iraq right we will see a scenario unfold that is unacceptable.
A) another strong man will arise who is relatively secular and brutal
B) A Shia Republic will be formed similar to Iran, but potentially more radical
C) Partition sending Turkey and Syria into land rushes
D) Civil War that could easily provide a haven to Al Qaeda or a similar group–ironically creating a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda
I view all of these as unacceptable from both humanitarian and strategic perspectives.
“I supported this war. I now regret that.”
AP, don’t feel bad about changing your mind, you are in fine company. As William Saletan points out in his Slate.com article, “All the President’s Suckers,” so-called flip-flopping is the last stage of trusting Bush.
“What do all these flip-floppers have in common? Not subject matter: DiIulio worked on social policy, O’Neill on economics, Clarke on national security. Not party: Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt are Democrats; O’Neill is a Republican; Clarke worked for President Reagan and both Bushes as well as for President Clinton. The only thing they have in common is that they all cooperated with this administration before deciding they’d been conned. Flip-flopping, it turns out, is the final stage of trusting George W. Bush.”
http://slate.msn.com/id/2098177/
LOL–I’m not sure if being a sucker makes me feel better, but I’m in some good company.
There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind about a failed policy. I once believed in Santa Claus too (well… maybe not. I was a Cynical child too). And if you can believe it, I actually voted for Jim Edgar once, because he seemed like a nice man and he wasn’t part of a machine. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, I can hear you all laughing already.
But that’s exactly what a lot of Bush voters thought 4 years ago. “Compassionate Conservatism” my eye. They should be encouraged to change their minds without being tarred as “flip-floppers” — a non-issue if ever there was one.
My, I’m wordy this morning.
No, I voted for Edgar–though my reasoning was he was pro-choice and wasn’t lying about school funding. Then the next election he lied about school funding and tried to pretend he had a new plan. The plan was, of course, Netsch’s plan with a different name. Shrugh.
And I never voted for Bush, I wasn’t that stupid.
My people–Assyrians–are an unrepresented Christian minority in Iraq with a history of being ruthlessly massacred by all of our neighbors. I supported this war, too, because I felt that no matter what Bush and Cheney’s ulterior motives were, in the end civil servants and career foreign service officials would prevail in day-to-day policy.
Boy, am I an idiot.
Now me and my family have to worry every day about a civil war, and what would happen to the defenseless, friendless Assyrian community.
We are faced with extinction, and nobody is listening to us.
Heh. I canceled my New Republic subscription over their vociferous support for the war on Iraq. Afghanistan was fine in my book, but I never bought the argument to take out Iraq.
But Netsch’s school funding plan was impossible without school reform, which happened as an effort by Republicans in Springfield to embarrass Daley. Netsch refused to talk about reforming the Chicago schools because she felt it was blaming the victim, but that killed her. Sadly, the a$$hole racist Pate Philip happened to be right that giving $1 billion to the CPS in 1994 was throwing money down a rathole.)
(Daley stepped to the plate by appointing Netsch’s protege — Vallas. So the irony’s in the whole story abound.)
I think the parallels work. The devil in the Iraq war was always in the details – although we have fancy new weapons, Clausewitz still holds. War remains an extension of politics. But Americans, and particularly Republicans, hold politics in ill repute, thinking it a tawdry business not worth thinking too hard about.
And so we entered a war without planning for the politics of the post-war, and of course, we’re losing. An anti-Sadam policy probably could have prevailed. But a war policy without the political blessing of the rest of the world was an adventure in naivete.
To naively support a war is in my opinion far more callous than anything that Markos did, yet AP felt that his callousness over the death of mercenaries, and mercenaries using the cover of humanitarian efforts, was wrong.
If those guns-for-hire were ‘protecting food shipments, then I want to see the evidence.’ But you know there is none, because it hasn’t come out. That was just another lie.
==To naively support a war is in my opinion far more callous than anything that Markos did, yet AP felt that his callousness over the death of mercenaries, and mercenaries using the cover of humanitarian efforts, was wrong.
So did Markos and I think from the communication we had he is comfortable with my statement and takes it as he should–a statement of support in general.
My view on the war was heavily guided by friends who were close to the situation. They felt there were WMDs and a nuclear program that was active. The particular friend is close to Ken Pollack and while he can’t talk freely, I get the sense he feels lied to by the administration as well. I was always skeptical of the method of getting to the war, though, I could tolerate some as just being different strategies.
My view on mercenaries is exactly the same as Markos and the post below should be read with the understanding that I find the use of such people as morally reprehensible.
> the post below should be read with the understanding that I find the use of such people as morally reprehensible.
That’s true, and I shouldn’t have written so glibly.
Yet there’s a larger point. Because I’m not the only one who’s been glib about issues of death in this war.
Some of the anger of my original post comes from my continued disgust that Iraqi victims, most not much more than bystanders, go nameless and faceless, yet we’re all compelled to stop what we’re doing and focus on the horrendous tragedy of the deaths of these mercenaries. Anyone who says he ‘felt nothing’ is called out.
It takes a large measure of casuistry to ignore the mounting death toll among Iraqis over weeks and months, but still feel compelled to denounce someone’s statement that he’s too numb to mourn the deaths of guns-for-hire. Whatever the context of the denunciation, it rings hollow to me.
I did spend a moment thinking about the families of the mercenaries when I heard the Fallujah riot – before this web controversy arose. I’ve tried to do that every time I hear about a casualty.
You said Markos initial comment was ‘offensive’ to you, because ‘the loss of human life is nothing to dismiss.’
That’s an honest feeling. I hope you’ll expand on it.
When American bloggers and diarists spend time humanizing the deaths of Iraqis, they’ll earn the right to talk about death and what is due the dead.
Wilson,
I think we are in agreement in general on how death is treated by most.
First, my support for the Iraqi War was predicated on my perception at the time that the war would in the long run save more lives. That is a judgment call and I have respected those with other views and in the short term, I now think they were right. In the long term, we might still have eventually confronted Iraq, but done so in a far different context.
That said, the purpose of the post was more to support Markos. I think what he said was wrong, but understandable and only one statement.
I hadn’t payed much attention other than quickly noting the blatherings of Reynolds and then I realized it had blown up into a big deal. My post was primarily to agree with Markos that, yeah he said something in anger, but in context one could easily understand it. I probably wouldn’t have said anything other than he seemed to be having a hard time and I wanted him to know I supported him. I didn’t feel the need to wring my hands on the subject until I saw how it was affecting him. He and Jerome at MyDD were the original inspiration for ArchPundit and Markos grew up in the burbs of Chicago. While I don’t know whether I can call him a friend since we aren’t terribly close, I certainly consider him someone I would be happy to help out. On top of that he is from a part of the world that shaped much of my political thinking and having been to Nicaragua–not El Salvador, but met with many Salvadoran regugees, I can’t understand his feeling, but I certainly see where they come from. And the use of these thugs infuriates me.
Now that said, I agree, putting the deaths of four mercenaries as more tragic than the deaths of thousands of civilians is silly. I don’t think we can minimize any of those deaths and I’d sit there and rant about Reynolds or the scum at LGF all day, but it isn’t worth it in the long run. Minimizing the deaths of civilians or Rachel Corrie, of whom I wasn’t a fan, is wrong and I had hoped I had conveyted that in the post about Markos and pointed out that his mistake was a relatively small one compared to the other garbage out there. Friedman’s garbage about her was horribly offensive and that wasn’t out of anger, but just bizarre dehumanization of her. LGF’s mission is to dehumanize Arabs and Muslims and routinely says things much, much more offensive than Markos. So, yes this notion that we should drop everything for these four individuals is silly.
On top of it, I don’t consider this a warblog. I talk about it as it is relevant and such, but my focus is on Illinois politics and then policy areas I have an interest in.