Our failure in Iraq

It has now been more than seven years since the invasion of Iraq, and it’s getting harder and harder to hang onto any shred of hope that this is all going to turn out well. Where do we stand today? Well, 84 people were murdered and hundreds more were wounded today in attacks across Iraq. It has been more than two months since the March 7 election, and not only does Iraq not have a new government, it doesn't even have final results of the balloting. The closest thing they have to an emerging government came to the fore last week, when it was announced that two Shiite blocs have allied with hopes of running the country. Those would be the two Shiite blocs supported by none other than Iran. And it gets worse. The two groups have signed a deal that would give Shiite clerics the final say in political disputes between the blocs. Isn’t that just great. Thanks to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the other chickenhawks in that administration, a secular dictatorship that did not allow fanatic Shiites to gain a foothold is now on the brink of becoming an Islamic theocracy. Nice work, George. I'm not trying to argue that Saddam Hussein was a lovely man, but he certainly provided a counterpoint to Iran's strength in the region. Now, Iran may be running Iran and Iraq. And let's not forget that the waging of this war of choice in Iraq was accomplished only by virtually abandoning the war in Afghanistan. Now Iraq seems very much on the brink of descending into bloody chaos, and our prospects of ever turning things around long-term in Afghanistan appear almost as bleak. If these misadventures had come with little cost to the United States, that would be one thing. But we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars we can ill afford on the war in Iraq. And Bush can scrub his hands 24/7, but he can’t wash off the blood of 4,000 American servicemen, servicewomen and Department of Defense civilians. That stain should haunt him always.

Quagmire redux?

President Obama will speak to the nation tomorrow night about his decisions regarding the ongoing conduct of the war in Afghanistan. According to an Associated Press report, the president is expected to commit to an escalation of the war that will involved perhaps 35,000 more U.S. servicemen and women. That, the AP said, would take the number of troops in Afghanistan to more than 100,000, at an annual price tag of $75 billion. I've made clear in the past my disgust over the war in Iraq, and the toll it took on our efforts in Afghanistan. Admittedly, I bashed Bush over his war decisions, and if Obama is going down the same path, committing who knows how many American lives and billions of our tax dollars to a military engagement with a highly uncertain outcome, I won't hesitate to criticism him. What I'd like to know from you folks is how you feel about a massive troop buildup and what you might do differently.

An incredibly bad memory

Republicans, and some Democrats, correctly took President Clinton to task for his prevarications and equivocations during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I wonder how many from the GOP will be bashing former Vice President Dick Cheney, who it turns out was very Alberto Gonzalez-esque in an FBI interview amid the investigation of the Valerie Plame affair. Plame, as you might recall, was allegedly outed as a CIA agent by the White House after her husband, an American envoy, accused the Bush administration of manipulating evidence to support its push for a war against Iraq. During the probe, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said there was a "cloud over the vice president.” And late last week, the FBI provided some support for that statement by revealing the summary of Cheney’s answers during a May 2004 interview. During that questioning, Cheney relied on the old "I can't recall” approach on 72 occasions. That’s six dozen times. Most notably, Cheney was asked whether he might have revealed the CIA status of Plame, whose married name was Wilson, to his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who ultimately was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the feds. According to the FBI interview summary, "It is possible Libby may have learned about Valerie Wilson’s employment from the vice president ... but the vice president has no specific recollection of such a conversation." Now, if they asked Cheney what he had for lunch on the Tuesday six weeks earlier, I wouldn't blame him for issuing an "I can’t recall.” But when it comes to a central issue in the outing of a CIA operative, I'm a bit skeptical of Cheney's answer. It's a shame they couldn't have hooked him up to a lie detector when they conducted the interview. I'm guessing the machine would have gone through a lot of ink.

Tough questions

The news came down today that four more U.S. Marines were killed in Afghanistan. This time, a roadside bomb did the damage. And the AP reports that the pace of deaths, if it continues, will make August one of the deadliest months for American troops since that war began. We lost 44 of our people there last month. We all know the background. We went in and started kicking behinds after the 9/11 attacks, but we essentially abandoned the fight in Afghanistan in favor of an ill-conceived war in Iraq. After more than 4,000 of our troops were killed and tens of thousands more wounded in the Iraq war, we turned our attention back to Afghanistan. But in the meantime, the same evil elements who engineered the 9/11 attacks had regained their strength. Reuters reported this week that it had obtained a threat assessment map developed by Afghan and U.S. security officials that shows nearly half of Afghanistan is at high risk of an attack by Taliban or other insurgent forces, or is under "enemy control." And that map was developed BEFORE a major surge in violence ahead of this month’s Afghan elections. There’s even a growing insurgent presence right outside the capital, Kabul, which rebels hit with nine rockets earlier this week, the first such brazen attack in years. The U.S. has been pouring thousands more troops into Afghanistan in an attempt to make up for the neglect of the mission during the Iraq war, but we have to question whether this is reasonable and prudent. Certainly, the "surge" in Iraq would be considered a success, but that's still a short-term gain that is being maintained by a continuing presence of more than 130,000 American servicemen and women. And what happens when, under a U.S.-Iraq agreement, we withdraw the vast majority of those troops by 2011? Virtually no one disagreed with the original decision to invade Afghanistan. We were attacked, and we responded against those responsible. But cleaning up Afghanistan requires troops – lots of them, and for a long time. Simply bombing them back to the Stone Age isn't much of an option when they've barely progressed past that point anyway. So, at this point, the same questions that were asked about the Iraq war need to be asked in regard to Afghanistan. What are the prospects for lasting success? How long are we willing to have tens of thousands of our troops in Afghanistan? And, most importantly, how many of our people are we willing to see maimed and killed in the process?

Proceed at your own risk

Former President Bill Clinton has been getting mostly good press for his mission to North Korea that won the release of wayward American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering the country. It might sound harsh, but I have to question why he bothered. Bush administration United Nations Ambassador John Bolton leapt into action to accuse Clinton of rewarding North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il by making the mission of mercy, but I really don't think that's the case. What is Kim going to do? Put up a sign that says "Bill Clinton slept here"? Heck, half the women in Arkansas could probably do that. But why should any effort have been extended? There are indications that the two women, who were working for a media outfit founded by Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, crossed deliberately into North Korea. Surely they knew they were dealing with a repressive military regime led by a raving lunatic. My feelings are the same regarding the three hikers who reportedly crossed accidentally into Iran and are now being held as spy suspects by Tehran. One could ask why the three – one of whom was a journalist – were hiking anywhere near the Iranian border. The kind of blatant disregard for personal safety and common sense displayed in both these cases leads me to think that the folks involved pretty much got what they were asking for. And they shouldn't have expected anyone to come running to bail them out.