A couple of days ago Brent Scowcroft penned an editorial in the New York Times. Scowcroft is a smart man. He publicly warned against the invasion of Iraq and his concerns have borne out with alarming accuracy. In reading his recommendations I was struck by three things. First, I was struck by the clarity of his thought. He fully understands the stakes. We can see this in the following:
An American withdrawal before Iraq can, in the words of the president, “govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself” would be a strategic defeat for American interests, with potentially catastrophic consequences both in the region and beyond. Our opponents would be hugely emboldened, our friends deeply demoralized.
Iran, heady with the withdrawal of its principal adversary, would expand its influence through Hezbollah and Hamas more deeply into Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Jordan. Our Arab friends would rightly feel we had abandoned them to face alone a radicalism that has been greatly inflamed by American actions in the region and which could pose a serious threat to their own governments.
The effects would not be confined to Iraq and the Middle East. Energy resources and transit choke points vital to the global economy would be subjected to greatly increased risk. Terrorists and extremists elsewhere would be emboldened. And the perception, worldwide, would be that the American colossus had stumbled, was losing its resolve and could no longer be considered a reliable ally or friend — or the guarantor of peace and stability in this critical region.
The second thing that struck me was that Scowcroft suffers from the same fault that characterized the Best and the Brightest during Vietnam. This fault is in placing too much emphasis on keeping our word and maintaining the perception that we are reliable. We can see this in Scowcroft’s emphasis on “Our opponents would be hugely emboldened, our friends deeply demoralized” and “the perception, worldwide, would be that the American colossus had stumbled, was losing its resolve and could no longer be considered a reliable ally or friend.” Scowcroft returns to this theme in his conclusion:
As we work our way through this seemingly intractable problem in Iraq, we must constantly remember that this is not just a troublesome issue from which we can walk away if it seems too costly to continue. What is at stake is not only Iraq and the stability of the Middle East, but the global perception of the reliability of the United States as a partner in a deeply troubled world. We cannot afford to fail that test.
I’ll return to this mindset after I tackle the third thing that struck me about Scowcroft’s editorial. Scowcroft’s main proposal can be seen here:
A vigorously renewed effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict could fundamentally change both the dynamics in the region and the strategic calculus of key leaders. Real progress would push Iran into a more defensive posture. Hezbollah and Hamas would lose their rallying principle. American allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states would be liberated to assist in stabilizing Iraq. And Iraq would finally be seen by all as a key country that had to be set right in the pursuit of regional security.
Arab leaders are now keen to resolve the 50-year-old dispute. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel may be as well. His nation’s long-term security can only be assured by resolving this issue once and for all. However, only the American president can bring them to the same table.
Resuming the Arab-Israeli peace process is not a matter of forcing concessions from Israel or dragooning the Palestinians into surrender. Most of the elements of a settlement are already agreed as a result of the negotiations of 2000 and the “road map” of 2002. What is required is to summon the will of Arab and Israeli leaders, led by a determined American president, to forge the various elements into a conclusion that all parties have already publicly accepted in principle.
Now, whether we escalate in Iraq or we withdraw, I agree with Scowcroft’s analysis here. Our invasion of Iraq has inadvertently empowered Iran’s Shi’ite regime. This may offer us a classic opportunity to make lemonade out of our lemons. Iran’s increased influence is now a greater concern to Arab Sunnis that the plight of the Palestinians, and America’s defeat in Iraq should certainly focus Israel’s mind on the need for an agreement that can provide for their security. We may have an unique window to hammer out a comprehensive peace agreement. But we have to remember who is in the White House.
If “a vigorously renewed effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict” is an essential ingredient in limiting the fallout from Iraq, then it is equally essential that we remove the present administration from office.
This is equally important when we consider Scowcroft’s concern with perceptions and keeping promises.
I think Scowcroft is basically dreaming if he thinks we can lose a war and not break any promises or let down any of our allies. No soldiers should be sent to fight for an impossible goal of maintaining perceptions. But, one way to minimize the negative consequences of losing the war in Iraq is to remove the President and Vice-President from office. By repudiating their terms in office, we also repudiate their manipulated intelligence, their decision to invade, and we reassure our allies that we are capable of dealing with a government that gets out of control.
Our allies need to be reassured that America will not go off half-cocked again and drag them along for the ride. If we tell the world that we agree with them that the Bush administration has been wrong and has not acted wisely or responsibly, it will do more to restore confidence in us than will two, three, or four more years of failure in Iraq.
Watergate offered our nation a much needed chance to make a reckoning of our epic blunder in Vietnam. No President has ever been granted the opportunity to clean up their own mess after embroiling us in an unwise war. Truman was replaced by Eisenhower, who negotiated a truce. LBJ was replaced by Nixon who, in turn, was replaced by Ford. Bush and Cheney need to be replaced for all the same reasons.
It’s not only their unwillingness to jumpstart the Middle East peace process, it is their total lack of credibility abroad and at home. We cannot begin to move forward until we have new leadership. It’s the same logic that is driving Bush to replace our commanders and intelligence chiefs. Those that preside over failure are ill-equipped to handle the aftermath.
This is something that Senator Lieberman doesn’t seem to understand.
“The president of the United States gets this,” Lieberman said. “I think he sees the moment that we are at in the larger war on terrorism and the significance of how we conclude the war in Iraq, how devastating it would be to the Iraqis, to the Middle East, to America if we simply withdrew. He needs our support.”
John McCain is of a similar mindset. He says, “It’s just so hard for me to contemplate failure that I can’t make the next step.”
The war in Iraq has come down to this: Scowcroft, Lieberman, McCain, Bush and others are scared to death of the consequences of defeat. They are willing to pays billions of dollars and lose thousands of America lives in order to postpone the day of reckoning. And it won’t be merely a ‘day’, it will be a messy, uncertain future. Lindsay Graham was on Meet the Press this morning talking about Iran annexing the southern oil fields and the Turks invading Kurdistan. He is terrified and is willing to put a hundred thousand more troops in and fight for years to try to prevent the worst.
My message to all of these people is pretty simple. The war is lost. Scowcroft is right that we must have ‘a vigorously renewed effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict’. We will not get that under neo-conservative leadership. I call on these Republicans to support the drive to force the resignations of Bush and Cheney, using the same process that drove Nixon from power.
Our national security and the welfare of the world demands that we do this. And we need your support.
Also in orange.
I think we need to impeach Cheney first. We all know he’s been the driving force behind the war in Iraq, and the one most pushing to bomb Iran as well.
I think this is your most persuasive argument yet for impeachment. These paragraphs bear repeating:
These words ring true and compelling as rational political argument. I think the case can be reinforced at a more basic human level as well. Bush’s madness and venality has forced America into an impossible situation with regard to world perceptions of what must now be done. The problem is not just a loss of confidence — that’s already a done deal. What runs deeper, I think, is simply a feeling that America cannot be allowed to just get away from feeling the pain of its wrong and bad behavior. Nobody outside pathetic Tony Blair is eager to ride in on white horses and save us from “the perception, worldwide, …that the American colossus had stumbled, was losing its resolve and could no longer be considered a reliable ally or friend.”
It is a stunning and agonizing exercise to remember the world’s attitude toward us 10 years ago, or the near-unanimous outpouring of support and empathy following Sept 11. That disaster was minor compared to those suffered by other societies, and yet the regard for this nation was such that the world responded to it as a crushing historic event. Bush not only squandered the opportunity offered by that flood of good will, but managed to reverse it.
Now we have no credibility and little good will. There will be little inclination to save us from our own stupidity and madness as embodied by Bush. Not until we pay for it. If we do nothing, that payment could well consist of further terrorism and international isolation. The ancient solution to such a situation, one that satisfies the deepest, oldest human imperatives, would be making a sacrifice. In this case, of the most prominent of the leaders who led the populace to crime and disaster. Fortunately for Bush and Cheney our modern times do not call for spears and blood but merely prosecution, conviction, and punishment in accordance with established law and custom.
I think Scowcroft has that part exactly wrong: what is needed is not continuing to pose as a perfect “colossus”, but in acknowledging our mistakes as a people by punishing and abandoning the leaders who took us down that path to perdition. There is nothing left for us a achieve by behaving as a “colossus”. Our only way ahead, our only way to begin to regain the world’s vital cooperation, lies in developing the humility to admit to being sucker-punched and get rid of those who betrayed us with such tragic results.
The alternative, waiting patiently until January 2009 for a new administration,is simply too dangerous. That my friends is over two years away. At the rate things are deteriorating in the Mid East in the last year, we simply cannot afford to wait. We simply can’t.
Using language with every word in it but “impeach,” today’s NYT lays out the case for impeachment article by article, offense by offense, illegal act by illegal act.
It challenges the Democrats to not shirk their duty to voters, saying that they have a “moral responsibility”
now they’re in office.
And here’s the telling paragraph that calls for impeachment.
Folks, this isn’t euphemism, this isn’t shrill rhetoric, this is the measured and reasonable speech of the nation’s most influential paper telling Democrats in Congress to do what they were elected to do. Period.
We should be grateful that McCain is backing the surge. The results will pretty much cripple him in 2008. I know that’s an almost Kos level of cynicism, but I feel pretty sure that it will work out to be the case anyway.
I fail to see how the reliability of the US as a partner would be affected by withdrawal from Iraq.
The issue here is reliability in what way?
The very actions that we have taken in Iraq are the height of US unreliability. We have committed aggression against a sovereign state. We have violated human rights of people inside Iraq and outside, despite our reliable reputation for promoting human rights. We have occupied a country under the guise of liberation. We have foolishly tied down resources in Iraq instead tending to existing commitments.
Withdrawing from Iraq doesn’t threaten our reputation for reliability, it is the first step to restoring it.
Impeach.
When you’re beat, you’re beat. Like most of the Establishment, Scowcroft is still in denial. Short of mounting a total war in the defense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of the SUV lifestyle, the Middle East venture is a dead parrot. The strategic defeat has happened The question now is how to minimize the damage.
The United States is a strong and virtually invulnerable nation. Nobody is going to attack us except a few terrorists, if they’re lucky, and they won’t do any more damage than the ETA has done in Spain (bad enough, but not nation-threatening). We are moving into a new era, one in which America no longer calls the shots. This is what the Washington establishment, including people like Joe Wilson cannot accept.
There has to be a rethinking of our strategy in a world that we no longer control. It was going to happen eventually anyway; it just happened sooner than expected because of the moron in the White House. The most important thing right now is that we do not give any opportunity for a ‘stab in the back’ myth to germinate and prosper. This is a recipe for future war, and if it happens it will be the last one for all of us.
What makes these people “think” that we’re going to suddenly lose credibility in the world and embolden the terrorists by leaving Iraq? We already lost credibility and emboldened the terrorists after we abandoned Afghanistan — FOR THE SECOND TIME! Let’s stop the pretense and denial. America is not god nor does the world perceive us as so. Espousing perception over human life does not make a nation proud, powerful, or profound. It is merely a man without humility who fears emasculation and chagrin. And so he shall suffer… Extricate our troops and impeach!