Pssst, The War’s Not Over

The “Obamameter” is the St. Petersburg Times new tool for following President Obama’s progress on completing his campaign promises. It’s very cute and handy, but is it any more reliable than the president?

While checking in to the site this afternoon, I came across this in the “Promise Kept” section: “No. 125: Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq.” Needless to say, my jaw dropped. Did I miss something super important when I compiled my daily casualty report this morning? Should I run out and pick up a hard copy of the newspaper in hopes of seeing “IRAQ WAR ENDS” as the headline? Or should I just dig into this “promise kept” a little bit further?

As evidence of a kept promise, the paper quoted Obama as saying, “on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war” and re-ran a story on Obama’s historic meeting with military officials. Okay, so that is vaguely true, but is it what the public was hoping for? A meeting that, even a month later, has given us no new, concrete plans? President Bush undercut that promise anyway, when gave us the SOFA agreement that forces U.S. combat troops out by the end of 2011. I was expecting more at this point in the administration. Heck, the Obama hasn’t even bothered to get a new Defense Secretary yet.

Obama in the same op-ed piece wrote, “[we] can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months.” That particular sentence, I believe, is what lured many voters to pull Obama’s knob in the voter’s booth. But, as of this morning, he is still considering a 23-month timeline—and the drawdown in Iraq would be mostly to feed the Afghanistan surge instead of ending U.S. warmongering.

Thankfully, the Times has the 16-month timeline as their next campaign promise, but if you are looking just in the “Promises Kept” section, you get the phony impression that Obama has done something to speed up the end of the war. At least that’s what I thought at first. I don’t know if the Obamameter’s editors meant to be intellectually dishonest — I actually don’t think so — but we have to stay on top the media and the President if this endless is ever to actually end.

Unfortunately, President Obama has also apparently kept the following promise: “No. 134: Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan.”

We have to do something about that too.

Amazing Appointment — Chas Freeman as NIC Chairman

As first reported by Laura Rozen and subsequently confirmed by Chris Nelson, it appears that Chas Freeman has been appointed chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the body that is charged by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with synthesizing the analyses of the entire U.S. intelligence community and producing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) — the most famous of which was the December 2007 NIE on Iran’s nuclear program that put paid to the hopes of hawks who favored a military action against Tehran — that are used to guide policymakers on critical issues facing U.S. security.

To me, this is a stunning appointment. There are very few former senior diplomats as experienced and geographically well-rounded (just look at this bio here), knowledgeable, entertaining (in a mordant sort of way), accessible (until now at least), and verbally artful as Freeman. He can speak with equal authority about the politics of the royal family in Saudi Arabia (where he was ambassador), the Chinese Communist Party — he served as Nixon’s primary interpreter during the ground-breaking 1972 visit and later deputy chief of mission of the Beijing embassy, and the prospects for and geo-strategic implications of fossil-fuel production and consumption over the next decade or so. But, more to the point, he was probably the most direct and outspoken — and caustic — critic of the conduct of Bush’s “global war on terror,” especially of the influence of the neo-conservatives — of any former senior member of the career foreign service. His appointment constitutes a nightmare, for the Israeli right and its U.S. supporters, in particular, (and for reflexive China-bashers, as well).

For a taste of both his rhetorical style and his politics, see, for example, this speech he gave to the U.S. Information Agency Alumni Association two years ago or, better yet, this one to the Pacific Council on International Policy in October 2007 in which he says:

“In retrospect, Al Qaeda has played us with the finesse of a matador exhausting a great bull by guiding it into unproductive lunges at the void behind his cape. By invading Iraq, we transformed an intervention in Afghanistan most Muslims had supported into what looks to them like a wider war against Islam. We destroyed the Iraqi state and catalyzed anarchy, sectarian violence, terrorism, and civil war in that country.

Meanwhile, we embraced Israel’s enemies as our own; they responded by equating Americans with Israelis as their enemies. We abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel’s efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations. We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists. This has convinced most Palestinians that Israel cannot be appeased and is persuading increasing numbers of them that a two-state solution is infeasible. It threatens Israelis with an unwelcome choice between a democratic society and a Jewish identity for their state. Now the United States has brought the Palestinian experience – of humiliation, dislocation, and death – to millions more in Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel and the United States each have our reasons for what we are doing, but no amount of public diplomacy can persuade the victims of our policies that their suffering is justified, or spin away their anger, or assuage their desire for reprisal and revenge.”

He doesn’t pull punches.

Bovard Book Title Contest

I am finishing up a new book and am seeking suggestions for a snappy title.

The book’s essays deal with the political sanction for mass killing, the fraud of idealism, how truth is perverted in Washington, why power corrupts, Leviathan-loving intellectuals, the fatal myths of democracy, and other cheery topics. My tentative title is “Principles & Paradigms: How Politicians Con Citizens Into Submission.” But my hunch is that the title could be better.

Ideally, the title would be both hard hitting and zippety. In the past, I’ve been a pushover for alliteration (Fair Trade Fraud, Farm Fiasco, Bush Betrayal, Terrorism & Tyranny). Alternatively, the title would be a phrase that sticks in people’s memories – such as Lost Rights, Freedom in Chains, or Attention Deficit Democracy.

The person who suggests the winning title will receive $100 and will be mentioned in the book’s acknowledgments. (Second prize is two mentions in the acknowledgments).

Send suggestions to jim@jimbovard.com

Thanks for the help!
Jim Bovard
www.jimbovard.com
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UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who is suggesting titles. I really appreciate the time and thought that folks are putting into their title proposals. Some fine zesty stuff here! 2/16

‘Obama’s War in Iraq May Be Longer Than Bush’s War in Iraq’

So says Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco and The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, on last night’s Daily Show.

“General Odierno says he would like to see 35,000 troops there (Iraq) in 2015. What that means is that we may be just halfway through this thing.”

A very sobering interview, especially for one on Jon Stewart’s show.

Whither Zinni

Those who have believed that the departure of Dubya from the oval office will mean that Israeli politicians will no longer be able to call up American presidents and tell them what to do should think twice. The story of General Anthony Zinni’s aborted appointment as ambassador to Iraq has received remarkably little attention, and it has been attributed to his being a general and his directorship with major military contractor Dyncorp. Neither explanation is plausible as Hillary Clinton certainly knew he was a general when the appointment was discussed and the issue of Dyncorp never came up in the interview process.

Zinni was offered the position after an interview with Hillary Clinton at the end of January and even received a call from Joe Biden congratulating him on the next day, but the assignment was derailed in the following week. Christopher Hill received the ambassadorship instead of Zinni and Zinni received no explanation why he had been passed over, which reportedly irritated the hell out of him.

I have been informed by a State Department contact that Zinni was rejected after Clinton came under pressure from some major supporters in New York State who told her that the appointment was unacceptable to Israel because Zinni is perceived as “hostile” to the Jewish state. Zinni has, indeed, been critical of Israel on a number of occasions. Another source in the intelligence community has told me that Zinni was perceived as bad for Israel’s security because Israel regards Iraq as a “front line state” in its confrontation with Iran. If Israel were to attack Iran it would need overflight approval over Iraq, something that Zinni would be unlikely to approve, possibly even submitting his resignation to stop such a development. It is not clear if Hill would necessarily be more amenable, but as a career diplomat not known for being outspoken or independent minded he would be unlikely to rock the boat if Washington wanted to look the other way to enable an Israeli attack.

Cross-posted at The American Conservative blog.

#200 for Abe the Warmonger

Thursday is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln. I would be perplexed by the Lincoln cult if I thought the prime Lincoln idolizers gave a damn about individual liberty. Lincoln is lionized not because he saved self-government, but primarily because he sanctified and vastly extended Leviathan.

Here is a riff I did on Lincoln for a National Review Online symposium on Lincoln 8 years ago, and a snippet on Abe from Attention Deficit Democracy

James Bovard, February 2001:

How can the same people who vigorously support indicting Serbian leaders for war crimes also claim that Lincoln was a great American president?

Lincoln bears ultimate responsibility for how the North chose to fight the Civil War. The attitude of some of the Northern commanders paralleled those of Bosnian Serb commanders more than many contemporary Americans would like to admit.

In a September 17, 1863, letter to the War Department, Gen. William Sherman wrote: “The United States has the right, and … the … power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain. We will remove and destroy every obstacle — if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper.” President Lincoln liked Sherman’s letter so much that he declared that it should be published.

On June 21, 1864, before his bloody March to the Sea, Sherman wrote to the secretary of war: “There is a class of people [in the South] — men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.” How would U.N. war crimes investigators react if Slobodan Milosevic had made this comment about ethnic Albanians?

On October 9, 1864, Sherman wrote to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant: “Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources.” Sherman lived up to his boast — and left a swath of devastation and misery that helped plunge the South into decades of poverty.

General Grant used similar tactics in Virginia, ordering his troops “make all the valleys south of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad a desert as high up as possible.”

The Scorched Earth tactics the North used made life far more difficult for both white and black survivors of the Civil War.

Lincoln was blinded by his belief in the righteousness of federal supremacy. The abuses and tyranny that he authorized set legions of precedents that subverted the vision of government the Founding Fathers bequeathed to America.

****From Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, 2006):

The more vehemently a president equates democracy with freedom, the greater the danger he likely poses to Americans’ rights. President Abraham Lincoln was by far the most avid champion of democracy among nineteenth century presidents—and the president with the greatest visible contempt for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Lincoln swayed people to view national unity as the ultimate test of the essence of freedom or self-rule. That Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, jailed 20,000 people without charges, forcibly shut down hundreds of newspapers that criticized him, and sent in federal troops to shut down state legislatures was irrelevant because he proclaimed “that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

***

Lysander Spooner, a Massachusetts abolitionist, ridiculed President Lincoln’s claim that the Civil War was fought to preserve a “government by consent.” Spooner observed, “The only idea . . . ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this—that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.”