Arrogance, Apathy & Intransigence
When it comes to Iraq these days, an arrogant President Bush seems more out of touch than ever, the war seems to be fading from the consciousness of an increasingly apathetic American public faster than ever, and the whole reason for the surge – that improved security would create the breathing room for Iraqi factions to kiss and make up – is being undercut more than ever by the overweaning intransigence of the Baghdad government.
It has fallen to military commanders in the field to belabor the obvious: Sunni insurgents, Al Qaeda terrorists and Iranian-backed militias are no longer the biggest threat to the U.S. mission. It’s the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki.
Thomas E. Ricks, the Washington Post’s estimable military affairs correspondent, reports that these commanders fear the window of opportunity provided by the sharp decline in attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians will be squandered if the Al-Maliki government doesn’t get off the dime.
But why should it?
President Bush threatens to veto yet another Democratic-sponsored war spending bill that includes a timeline for troop withdrawals. This scores points with what is left of his political base, but once again sends the wrong message to Al-Maliki: That he will be neither pressured nor punished by the U.S. for his refusal to take seriously the need to mend fences with his opponents.
This familiar iteration of White House politics in the absence of policy has to be giving those commanders chest pains.
With the combat brigades sent to Iraq for the surge set to begin returning home in only five months and Iraqi security forces showing little indication that they can take over, the commanders whom Ricks interviewed seemed beside themselves with frustration.
Said Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq: “It’s unclear how long that window is going to be open.”
And Brigadier General John F. Campbell, deputy commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division: “The [Iraqi cabinet] ministers, they don’t get out. They don’t know what the hell is going on on the ground.”
Although none of these commanders are going to say so publicly, the one person who might be able to break the logjam at this point stubbornly refuses to do so. That is the commander in chief, who seems determined to squander a rare — and possibly the only — success in the four and a half year old war.
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31 Responses to “Arrogance, Apathy & Intransigence”
There was a time when I actually thought that if this had been Al Gore or John Kerry invading Iraq that the left would be on board but Ive come to the conclusion that is not the case at all.
Democracy is the most difficult form of government there is. A nation just does not wake up from 2000 years of Kings, Dictators, Overlords, repression, surpression and say …..Give me Liberty or Give me Death.
Democracy takes time to take hold. It takes time for the people to want it, claim it and to figure out just what It means. Freedom for those who have never had freedom means difficult times ahead.
Look at Russia. They were freed after 70 years. The country was in a mess, things were bad and because we as a world did not step in and help them claim freedom its back to Tyranny, and repression. A slow burn back to the days of old when They may not be free but at least they have food on the table. Now the sabres once again are rattling in Russia as Putin with his renewed love affair with surpression and communism is embolded by coffers filling with oil money begins once again to flex his muscles.
Democracy is very hard to claim.
You and your left wing/antiwar drum beaters should be the first to be encouraging them/helping them/supporting them/aid and comforting them…..but instead you have raised your POM POM’s high and are cheering on their Defeat so they can once again suffer the fate of those who did not quite get it.
Too me…..the left should be beating the drum of success when it comes to democracy……..not the right…..which only further supports the notion that the left simply hates democracy and anything short of socialism/communism is just not worth the effort.
The left is so dysfunctional. They desire Welfare/socialism/Communistic (Mass Government Involvement)programs to make life better for them and yet…….they scream the loudest when personal liberties are at stake.
It must really be tough being a far left liberal. It would make my head spin.
Um….
Well, a few days ago, one of the regular commenters here (I think it was Sam) suggested that people haven’t become apathetic, just accepting of the fact that President Bush isn’t going to do anything.
That seems accurate to me.
I don’t think people are forgetting.
From The Onion.
[...] Mine Arrogance, Apathy & Intransigence » This Summary is from an article posted at The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]
Hehe, gotta love the onion!
Good post overall Shaun. I agree with much of it, though I don’t think threats of withdrawal or actual withdrawal will pressure Maliki to compromise – rather the opposite is more likely in my view.
As an interesting addition to your post, there are a few from Pat lang:
Read especially the last link I gave for some interesting historical perspectives.
Oh, as for American apathy, read this (sorry, subscription only):
I particularly like this image.
Somebody- I don’t speak for the left, but when are you going to admit that 68% of the country thinks the war is a disasterous flop? That’s a lot more than just the left, it is now the mainstream opinion.
Perhaps even “regular” folks , not just wild-eyed radicals, are tired of blowing 12 billion a month, while getting every bill that could possibly aid working Americans vetoed by this president.
Yes, creating democracy is a tricky business. You can bet that ending the Cold War would not have been as popular here if we had to say, occupy Russia until they figured it out. For whatever reason, the Iraqis have made no political progress, and its safe to assuem will continue that pattern for the forseeable future. Should we spend another 2 trillion while they sort things out?
Beyond the usual liberal-left bashing (as opposed to bashing liberal-lefties for the usual conservative-right wing bashing), this comment threat points out a couple of obvious points:
* Under the best of circumstances, Iraq was not going to be transformed into any sort of democracy overnight, let alone in four years.
* Blaming that small clique of officials without blaming the voting public (and Congress) is shortsighted.
Those points so noted, all of the bombed-out roads in this war lead back to one man and one man only, and at the end of the day most of the blame — and the shed blood — must fall on him for dragging America into the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That would be George Walker Bush, whom I recently read has met privately with many families of the men and women that his war has killed. Touching off-camera gestures that nevertheless beg the question: “Why doesn’t he get it?”
This quote (via Etnropy’s comment) describing America, is extremely maaningful:
“a political philosophy that demands much from its government but asks little of its citizens”
it explains a lot about how we get into wars, conduct ourselves during wars and conduct our political life, in general.
Just recently read that huh, he has been doing this from the beginning. He probably doesn’t get it because a majority of the families don’t see the world thru the Shaun Mullen lens.
And once things like this start happening, momentum starts to build , then things tend to move quickly.
Shaun,
I think you go too easy on the American public.
If they wete misled, they were calmoring to be misled., at least significant numbers of them. Americans, like any people. are quick to turn to mob menatality in times of anxiety or fear.
Ordianry people can start clamoring for vengeance at the drop of the hat. And they do enjoy the fantasy that the government can do anything under the sun that they may want, like Superman.
The war was a collaboration between the men with the plan and a public eager for any plan that promised revenge for 9/11.
It wasn’t Bush or the neocons who attacked neighbors for voicing doubts about the war. It was those stalwarts of democracy -American citizens.
The folks who see war and US power in the world as an innate right aren’t confined to Washington or intellectual circles. Many of them stand in line at the grocery with you.
Exactly! It’s one reason why our founders developed representative government – to limit the power of the “mob” mentality. Alas, it obviously is not perfect.
Also, the article I quoted is more generally an attack against neoliberalism:
and
Anthony Cordesman predicted this situation during his visit to Iraq and subsequent report, yet Mickey O’Hanlons report was all we heard. Colonel Ralph Roberts(ret) is on Billo and calls Blackwater thugs and rogues. But Kristol
Westmorlandsays were winning…FIXED
domajot:
Yes, Americans are partially to blame- but remember the mushroom cloud `threats?
The constant linking of al queda to Iraq? The false claims about Saddam’s WMD? The forged documents indicating that he was trying to get yellowcake from Niger?
Americans didn’t dream that up, there leaders did. There are several good books out there that detail how the nation was sold a bill of goods. By the time they realized it, we were stuck in Iraq,the country was destroyed along with tens of thousands of civillians, and there was no responsible way out. The leadership always bears the lion’s share of the burden, because even after public opinion shifted, Bush refused to go along with it.
tonto:
Marc Lynch at Abu Aardvark addresses your view of Al-Maliki’s progress-making thusly:
“Too me…..the left should be beating the drum of success when it comes to democracy……..not the right…..which only further supports the notion that the left simply hates democracy”
Somebody,
This is rediculous. The left(and middle in case you’re not paying attn) are very much for democracy. And I do support what you said earlier that democracy is a very hard goal that takes a long time to consolidate. You cite Russia as an example but you fail to notice the most critical factor in how democracies come about. They have to be spawned INTERNALLY.
Iraq never asked for a representative gov’t, there is no seed of democracy waiting to be watered and cared for there. We went in there on the presumption that they wanted to get rid of Saddam, likely true, and what they wanted after that would be to be become like the west, absolutely proven to be not true in the last 4 years.
What we are doing isn’t spreading democracy, its trying to ram it down the throat of people who aren’t interested and the results have been utterly predictable. So yea, those not on the right are for ending this foolish endevour and pulling the plug on this abortive attempt to force democracy on people that aren’t interested. Its costing thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, and human misery on the scale that only a bad military decision by a major world power can cause.
Actually, this isn’t so much a lefty anti-war hope-for-defeat thread as it is another round of Bush-bashing.
The public is tired of the war situation in Iraq, as the 2006 elections show. However, normal people are not going to make a big deal about it any more than they will make a big deal about waterboarding and other forms of torture, much less in the silly, pretentious high-minded posturing about either. Plus we know better than to insist on an immediate, abrupt total withdrawal from Iraq, the consequences of which would be the excuse for the current anti-war (and really, anti-Bush) crowd to criticize that withdrawal afterward.
DLS, you keep putting the cart before the horse. We don’t like Bush, therefore we don’t like bungled wars, suspension of habeus corpus, and torture as standard operating procedure for american prisoners. Its the other way around.
And what you call pretentious high-minded posturing I call legitimate defense of American ideals. You know, the things that separate us from the “Bad Guys”. Those ideals are high-minded. I could dumb it down a bit.
We don’t torture because its evil. American ideals are paid for in American blood one way or the other. At the end of it all we’ll still be on top unless we lose our way. We are losing our way and it has to stop.
You’re incorrect about my behavior, but it was clever what you wrote.
That is a euphemism and a distortion when in fact it’s overstated and people act like the Flagellants about it or gush about a superior moral position rather than simply say that of course waterboarding is torture, and it’s wrong, and Bush is an idiot to deny it is wrong, and then to move on to more important and up-to-date issues, because that one is and has been easily settled already.
The fact that Bush is behind it is much, much, much more than merely coincidental.
Do you seriously believe that if Pelosi or Clinton or some Dem had authorized it the left would be ok with torture? I’m totally speechless if thats the case.
Less loud and high-minded about it, is the answer, not necessarily taking the viewpoint the Left has had about Castro (or Mao, or with Chomsky, Pol Pot). To the Left’s defense I would add that there would not be the small pro-torture crowd that we see currently, but a more vocal “betrayal” contingent than we see currently with Bush (many non-liberals wrote him off before the torture problem; Abu Ghraib was an embarrassment and disgrace as well as an outrage, for example).
Well, to be fair, renditions began under Clinton….
Well I guess we’ll have to wait until someone on the left is doing what Bush is doing to find out. Although I see what you’re saying about those on the left who seem to give a pass to regimes that torture, there are fools on both sides.
And for the record I don’t see anything wrong with defending your beliefs in loud and high-minded fashion. Its the only way they should be defended, unless you’re in a movie theatre.
Well, to be fair, renditions began under Clinton….
Clenis is wrong for doing it. Does Somebody have the cajones to ask him if he regrets that decision?
Yep. (Chile, Iran under the Shah…)
I don’t see anything wrong with defending your beliefs in loud and high-minded fashion.
I certainly don’t neglect to do this, but not excessively so, or even neurotically so.
There are plenty of other issues out there that occupy Americans’ lives and minds other than Iraq, which is one reason (along with no drastic change in the situation in Iraq) why people aren’t riveted to the issue of Iraq 24 hours of every day. The price of gasoline is of concern to many, and just look at health care. While issues like this (which also applies to another form of therapy in which hep has already been spread; HIV is only a matter of time) may be of more interest to me than most people, health insurance and insurance company mistreatment and misconduct are an everyday item if not of experience, then of fear. Surely you heard about Health Net (I was aware of this company many years ago) and the bonuses paid for rescission of policies when people got sick? It happened to this person, Health Net was just fined, and a class action suit is being sought against Health Net because many were treated this way — and Health Net is not the only offender.
That is likely to be on the minds of some rather than continuous hyper-vigilance and insistence on rapid positive development or withdrawal from Iraq.
DLS-The left hated LBJ, a liberal who was responsible for miring the country in Vietnam. In fact the protests were much more violent and the US was torn almost in two. (though of course the draft accounted for most of that) The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago was marred by bloody violent protests.
Your larger point about torture not bothering the left that much when a Democrat approves it is baloney.
I’ve just reread the post and all the comments, and as a result, I foresee a gloomy future.
Current apathy is just another form of mob mentality – it has no periphearl vision. When Iraq casualties and explosions disappeared from news headlines, they diappeared from conscous thought.
Again, the public depends on some fantasy version of governemtnt to make everything all right, a la Superman.
That’s one link in a viscious circle, because governement, especially Congress, tesponds to the public. If they don’t respond enough to that part of the public who want to end the war now, it’s because they have to concern themselves with trying to guess what the public will demand tomorrow, not solely today. The, public, however, just goes on day to day, without accountablity or foresight, demanding this one day and demanding the opposie the next.
It is beginning to liook frigtheningly as if we might be in Iraq forever. It would take some dramatic new development to wake the public up and stop the game of blind man’s bluff. Maliki’s non-performance has become the norm, and thus it’s no longer dramatic enough to wake anyone up.
Of course, for as long as we’re there, we will be giving fuel to the forces that don’t want us to be there and thus fueling terrorism at home and abroad. I don;t even want to think about what that means.
I’m hoping a Democrat is the next president, because Democrats will buch their own party leadership (LBJ and Viet Nam), whereas for the Republicans, party loyalty trumps all (the Teagan motto).
I agree with Doma. Democrats refuse to rubber stamp their own president’s policies. Thus LBJ, Truman, Carter and Clinton encountered almost as much opposition from their own party as from Republicans. Clinton’s attempts at universal health care and an assault weapons ban failed while the Democrats were in the majority, and Carter’s main opposition came from Ted Kennedy, who wanted to run in 1980 for the Democratic nomination.
Republicans just protect and defend their own while in power- which is why Hastert never challenged Bush and vice versa. Republicans saw themselves as vital players on the president’s team.