Mayday Mission Deconstructed – GWOT morphs into the “GWOB”

In a bitter irony, the Democratic Congress will present President Bush a new war funding bill – which he has promised to veto – on the fourth anniversary of his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech of May 1, 2003. Meanwhile the American public is screaming, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” because President Bush is surging troops four years after he had declared “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

After tolerating four years of incompetence, the American people had clearly expressed their desire in the 2006 mid-term elections – to change the status quo ante in Iraq. Nevertheless, President Bush persists with a military “surge” strategy that defies the will of a majority of the people. Tragically, the Associated Press reported today that “U.S. Military Deaths Toll Rises Above 100 for Month, Making April Deadliest of 2007 So Far” and it also confirmed that April “has been the deadliest month for British forces in Iraq since the first month of the war.” In a weird twist of fate, the United States has gone from being a purveyor of “shock and awe” to becoming its hapless witness – as is evidenced in the ever-increasing carnage wrought by Iraq’s warring sectarian factions.

It thus seemed even more ironical that on the same day that we learned about the death of former Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, we also read about the American military building the equivalent of the “Great Wall of Baghdad (GWOB).” One might recall the big bear from Moscow climbing atop a tank to defend Russia’s fledgling democracy in 1991– an action that came to symbolize the tipping point in the dismantling of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Exactly twenty months and ten days after the Berlin Wall fell, the great wall of totalitarianism surrounding the “evil empire” had also been irrevocably ruptured.

Given the significance of walls in political history, it was rather distressing to find out that the world’s greatest democracy had sanctioned the erection of the GWOB in the darkest traditions of Berlin and Belfast. Could the U.S. have emulated a worse symbol of authoritarian occupation in Iraq than through a Soviet-style balkanization of the Iraqi people? The Global War on Terror (GWOT) has just morphed into what could become its defining symbol – the GWOB. So much for bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East – yet another of the Bush Administration’s ever-changing Iraq objectives has been turned on its head.

Finally, with their reported attempts to appoint a war czar at home, it is apparent that the Bush Administration is no longer in a state of denial – they are clearly trying to finesse a war situation that is going from bad to worse. President Bush has surely seen the writing on the wall – but it is not the graffiti on the GWOB going up in Iraq. No, I suspect that he has finally foreseen the fate of his GWOT policy of preemption, a.k.a. the Bush Doctrine. No one should be surprised if there is a “Roving” hand behind this final preemptive strike – to appoint a fall guy to manage the chaos as “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight” heads for the exit on the greatest disaster in American foreign policy in history.

Foreign Policy Evolution – My Way to the High Way

The recent kidnapping and release of British sailors by Iran should provide much needed foreign policy therapy to the western world. If the west is ever going to win the “global war on terror,” without preemptively calling it off, it needs to exhibit more backbone. It’s no surprise that these British sailors have been chastised for having “sung like canaries” after barely two weeks in captivity.

Instead of hearing “name, rank, and serial number,” the world saw these sailors acting chummy with their captors, “confessing” to their guilt, wearing enemy-supplied business suits, and pumping the Iranian president’s hand in deference. We have had real American civilian hostages, held for years in the eighties by Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon, who behaved with more dignity than these British “hostages.”

More importantly, their behavior is in stark contrast to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who have been held for over five years and subjected to some unquestionably rough treatment, but have yet to cough up the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden or Ayman Al Zawahiri. So it has become quite apparent that the western world needs to shift gears in its fight in the war on terror – it needs to reacquire its “Cold War-style” mentality and rely on more human intelligence than raw firepower to win it. (This is the basis for a “Silent War” strategy – that I had advocated back in September 2002 – which is explained in my 2005 book, “The Bush Diaries.”)

In the interim, by its very definition, the conduct of the “global war on terror” needs to be subject to international scrutiny. While speaking before a House appropriations subcommittee about Guantanamo Bay prisoners recently, Defense Secretary Gates requested Congress “to address the concerns about some of these people who really need to be incarcerated forever, but that doesn’t get them involved in a judicial system where there is the potential of them being released, frankly.”

Secretary Gates’ statement was troubling in many ways:

1. It implied continued distrust in the U.S. judicial system, which the Bush Administration has repeatedly tried to circumvent in the handling of suspects related to the attacks of 9/11.
2. By suggesting that some of these people “need to be incarcerated forever,” Mr. Gates was prejudging the gravity of their guilt, which thus far has not been proven in a court of law.
3. Whatever happened to the basic tenet – innocent until proven guilty – of modern western law?
4. Asking Congress to legislate the equivalent of what former Judge John J. Gibbons has referred to as “law-free zones” within the United States sets a dangerous precedent – imagine American citizens being held in foreign countries that established their own “law-free zones?”

As horrific as the events of 9/11 were, the United States has since been viewed internationally as subverting the rule of law at Guantanamo Bay – akin to changing the rules in the middle of the ball game to ensure that it wins. If President Bush is serious about bringing democracy to the Middle East, he must realize that it is not a zero sum game – it does not have to be restricted at home to export it abroad. In clichéd terms – democracy, like happiness, is not a destination but a journey. How one gets there is as important as actually getting there? Noble ends do not justify ignoble means – habeas corpus rights ought to be universal and sacrosanct. Winning over the hearts and minds of those Middle East monarchies has become harder with the Bush Administration’s “do as I say, not as I do” approach to fundamental human rights.

Speaking of monarchies, Jim Hoagland wrote about “Bush’s Royal Trouble” recently in his Washington Post column and why King Abdullah had turned down one of those rare Bush White House state dinner invitations. In my judgment, this trouble is not as much of an indicator that “Saudis, too, know how to read election returns” in the United States, as it is their recognition of the new realpolitik in the Middle East. Apparently, Jordan's King Abdullah has also told the White House – guess who else is not coming to dinner? It is therefore pretty obvious that major foreign policy realignment is in the works amongst the Sunni nations of the Middle East.

It’s clear that the Sunni command structure has been threatened by the outcome of the Iraq war. In essence, they have seen an oil-rich, Sunni-ruled nation fall under the influence of Iran – a rising symbol of Shia power, which supports the likes of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. But they have also seen the growth of this Shia power emanating from their people via popular elections, whereas Sunni supremacy continues to be sustained through unpopular monarchies. The Sunni royals recognize that going forward Islam could be their great uniter, if not their savior – and thus, they must try to co-opt Iran before the West does.

However, co-opting Iran is anathema to the Bush Administration – they won’t even talk to Iran or, for that matter, Syria. Given the Sunni realignment taking place in the Middle East, one would imagine that the Bush Administration would engage these two neighbors of Iraq to ensure that its Iraq policy does not get burned at both – Sunni and Shia – ends of the stick. But then, charity begins at home – if the Bush Administration has a basic problem uniting domestic opposition to its war policies, how is it going to bring foreign opponents to the Iraq table?

This “my way or the highway” culture is inbred – most domestic opponents of President Bush’s “global war on terror” policies are constantly harangued by all manner of conservatives as being unpatriotic. It stems from their extension of Bush’s “you’re either with us or against us” philosophy to ordinary American citizens who have a different viewpoint. Again, had the Iraq war – a war of choice – not been a “sacrifice-free” war for most Americans, they would have found it harder to polarize the populace so effectively. Also, if President Bush has been unable to convince a majority of Americans as to the reasons for continuing with the Iraq war, now in its fifth year, he is going to find it increasingly difficult to win there. It can therefore be argued that it is the president who is being unpatriotic by deliberately persisting with a policy that most Americans believe is causing long term damage to the foreign policy and overall reputation of the United States?

Is it any wonder then that we had neoconservative David Brooks lamenting in his recent New York Times column that “a new Republican governing philosophy did not emerge” prior to the last election? Mr. Brooks even suggested that the GOP needed to “shift mentalities.” If this is any indication that the neoconservative movement has finally started to unravel, there still maybe hope going forward. It should clearly begin with a new direction in U.S. foreign policy – one that will take the high road to restore the principles, respect, and leadership of the United States, and one that let all the neocons bail out at the last exit entitled, “My Way.”